


Salt of the Sea

by Vegorott



Series: Siren Tales Trilogy [1]
Category: jacksepticeye, markiplier - Fandom, youtube - Fandom
Genre: M/M, There will be plenty of violence, siren!au, tags added as needed, via Sirens eating people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 22,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24618265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vegorott/pseuds/Vegorott
Summary: The Ipliers are a well-known crew of ‘Pirates’ and one day, they accidentally catch a Siren named Anti. After a promise of guiding them to a large collection of gold in return for a safe release, the Pirates and Sirens are in for a strange change in their lives
Relationships: Bingle, Danti, Trickshot - Relationship, bimdere, dapperstache, schneeplier
Series: Siren Tales Trilogy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779880
Comments: 117
Kudos: 128





	1. Fresh Catch

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first part of the full-fledged story trilogy for the Siren!AU!!! This story will mainly focus on the ship Danti, along with the addition of a few other of my ships (Dapperstache, Doctor Lovin(Schneeplier), Bingle, Bimdere, Trickshot)

Anti was hungry and he was on the hunt. He easily glided through the water, each flick of his tail propelling him faster as he searched for a nice sized boat. He had left while his pod was working on getting everyone up so he had a good head start to look around. 

“Oh~” Anti giggled when he saw a large ship floating on top of the water. There had to be plenty of humans on there for the boat to be that large. There was no bad scent coming from it so he knew it was safe to go for it. Anti swam to the edge of the ship and popped his head up, wanting to get a layout of the ship and humans before going back to his pod. He started taking a tally of the human he could see. 

On the lower deck was a young woman typing up her long red hair talking with an obviously flustered young man with short, over-styled, brown hair. Two younger men who looked fairly similar to each other, their main difference being that their hair was parted on different sides, were discussing something as the worked with some rope. A large man with pink hair and a thick mustache was standing on the tip of the ship, arms crossed, and a playful smile on his lip. 

On the higher deck was another man kneeling in front of a chest, appearing to be counting something. He had that strange band on his arm that Anti didn’t understand was for. It was a thick white cloth with red lines that were overlapping each other. The large ships always had someone wearing that cloth on their arm and it never made sense to Anti. 

On the very top point of the ship were two more men who were clearly flirting with each other. One was wearing a blue shirt which strangely had one sort and one long sleeve and the other wore a pair of darkened glasses. 

Anti was about to dunk back down when he heard the squeaking of a door and his eyes went wide at the sight of a new human walking on the deck. The man stood tall and proud as he looked over the ship. His hair and eyes were so dark that they almost looked black, his face and body had small scars covering them, showing he was a human of action. He wore a silver chained necklace with a single red jewel in the center. Something about him mad Anti not want to look away, something about him made Anti want to see more of him, to speak with him to-

Anti yelped when he was suddenly pulled out of the water and he quickly realized he had been scooped up by a fishing net. There was a small collection of fish in the net with him and when he was dropped on the deck, he heard the humans gasp in shock and fear. 

“Is that a Siren!?” The styled man cried out, the young woman about to get closer for a better look but held back by him. 

“How did you manage to catch a Siren?” The man on the higher deck asked, coming down some steps towards all of them. 

“We just used the ropes.” One of the look-a-like men said, the other nodding in agreement. 

“Do we kill it?” The woman asked.

“Why would we do that?” The pink-haired human asked. “The lil guy isn’t doing anything to us.”

“The ‘lil guy’ is a Siren and Sirens eat people.” The styled man huffed. 

“Enough. Everyone step away.” The man who had caught Anti’s eye ordered, his voice deep and rough. He slowly made his way towards Anti, who looked at him through the strands of rope that were ‘trapping’ him. 

“Don’t get too close!” The two men from the highest point had made it to the same deck as everyone else. The one with the strange sleeves was speaking. “Sirens are known for being tricksters and their voices alone can lull you into a hypnotic state.” 

“Maybe that’s why it’s not talking.” The woman suggested. 

“I’d prefer to be called ‘he’ at least.” Anti chuckled, watching as the human all stared at him. “You can also call me by my name; Anti.” 

“Sirens have names?” The sleeved man asked. 

“What do you think we call each other?” Anti laughed. “And you need to tell whoever told you that we can’t talk casually to humans that they’re wrong. We just normally don’t since, well, we don’t hold many conversations with our meals.” Anti flashed his teeth and he watched the style man flinch away. 

“Maybe we should kill him.” The deep voice man said

“Now hold on, Dark.” The pink-haired man protested.

Dark? That was a fun name.

“What?” Dark said.

“If we let this Siren go, then he owes us for not hurting him.” The pink-haired man suggested. “Sirens know the water much better than we do.”

“I do know of a spot with a lot of gold,” Anti said, catching how all the humans perked up at that. “Some ship dropped a big chest of it when we were chasing it.” 

“I like the sound of that.” the pink-haired man said with a large grin. 

“What’s to say he doesn’t attack us the moment he’s free?” Dark asked. 

“Here, your Siren expert here should know about this.” Anti used his teeth to bite into his palm and making it bleed. He held the hand out towards them. 

“It’s a blood oath.” One of the look-a-likes stated. It was the same one who mentioned the ropes.

“I figured as much,” Dark said with a sigh. “I’m not injuring myself and risking contamination by crossing our blood, but I’ll believe in your good faith since you were willing to do it.” Dark gestured with a hand. “Untie him.” 

“No need.” Anti easily slipped out of the net and pulled himself up on the ledge of the ship, giggling at the faces of shock looking at him. “I have to go get my pod and they’ll help me show you guys where to go.” Anti winked and waved before diving into the water. 


	2. A Strange Deal

Dark sat on the ledge of the second deck, letting his legs hangover as he watched his crew talking to each other, all trying to figure out what had just happened. 

“We should turn the boat and get as far away as we can,” Bim suggested, unconsciously using a hand to fix a strand of hair.

“Because we’re going to be able to go faster than a pod of Sirens.” Yandere sighed, patting Bim on the back. Those two were almost as attached to the hip as the twins were. The twins, RJ and CJ were actually at the fishing area, trying to figure out how they managed to scoop up a Siren. 

“We can use this time to get armed,” Google said as he pulled down on the longer sleeve of his shirt. “We’re going to have to fight back.” 

“I don’t think there’s going to be a fight in the first place.” Bing slipped off his glasses and cleaned them with his own shirt, eyes shut until the glasses were back on his face. 

“How isn’t there going to be a fight?” Bim scoffed. 

“Anti never attacked us,” Wilford said, twitching his nose which made his mustache move as well. 

“He was trapped,” Google said. 

“Not really.” Wilford chuckled. “Even if he couldn’t have slid out like that, those claws of his would have turned the net into strings.” 

“Maybe he was sizing us up first?” Bim said. 

“He could have eaten all of us.” Yandere said, crossing her arms. “One Siren can take out a whole crew with no problem.” 

“Why didn’t he attack us then?” Edward finally spoke up, adjusting his Medic Patch. “If he could have killed all of us, why didn’t he?” 

“Maybe he wasn’t hungry?” Bing shrugged. 

“Wouldn’t stop him from killing and saving us for his pod or a later meal,” Google said. 

“Maybe he’s just curious.” Edward rubbed his chin. “Maybe he wants to know more about humans, like how we have animal researchers, perhaps he wants to be one but for humans.” 

“We aren’t farm animals,” Bim said. 

“We are to them,” Google muttered. 

“Hello? Dark?” A voice called from off the ship telling everyone who it was. 

“Stay,” Dark ordered as he got to his feet. The crew stayed where they were, watching as Dark went down the steps to the lower deck. Wilford broke from the group when Dark passed them and he joined Dark, both leaning over the ledge of the ship and towards the water. They were greeted with the sight of six Sirens.

“I’m going to take one guess at which one is ‘Dark’.” One of them chuckled. 

Dark didn’t react while Wilford chuckled, he was trying to get a good look at the group of Sirens beneath him. They all had what looked like varying shades of green trails, the water making it hard to fully tell what exact shade. The one who had spoken had gray swirls traveling up his arms, neck, and face, leaving his chest bare of any markings and could be mistaken as human if that was the only part seen. Anti, the Siren they’ve already met, was floating on his back next to the first Siren, his markings matching the same pattern but were black and were made of sharp lines. 

“It’s the pink one.” Anti giggled before flipping down into the water and swimming over to a different Siren. This one’s markings were almost the same color as his tail, but they were a little lighter and the lines twisted around his entire body and covered part of his face, making it appear as if he was wearing a mask. Next to the masked Siren was a much smaller one, he had purple markings on his tail, sides, and neck, all connecting in a way that almost looked like flowers. The small Siren giggled when Anti went past the masked Siren and popped up in front of him. The two other Sirens just watched. One of them had light blue stripes on his body, some going over his mouth and the other had gold markings that were splattered across his body in varying sizes. 

“I heard you let Anti go?” The gray Siren asked, catching Dark’s attention. 

“Yes. And he mentioned a collection of gold you know the whereabouts of.” Dark said. 

“Did he now?” The Siren looked at Anti. 

“Remember the one ship with the big human that sounded like a crying pup before Henrik ate him?” Anti gestured with his hands as he spoke. 

“We’ve had a few of those.” The masked Siren said.

“I’ll be more specific.” Anti swam over to the golden Siren and leaned against him, lowering his voice. “Someone’s speechless at the sight of me.” 

“Oh! That one!” The gray Siren said.

“I should have eaten him faster.” The light blue one grumbled. 

“I remember where that mess is. There were a lot of pieces in that box.” The gray Siren went back to looking at Dark. “If that’s what you really want, we can easily show you the way.” 

“What do you think-” Dark turned to Wilford and made a face when he saw his first-mate smirking and waving at the golden Siren. Dark grabbed Wilford by the back of his shirt and pulled him away. “What are you doing?” He asked between gritted teeth. 

“I’m being friendly,” Wilford said.

“To a Siren.” 

“Does that really matter?”

“Yes!” Dark pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“If we’re friendly, then they’ll be friendly back. Think of the benefits of being pals with Sirens.” Wilford nudged at Dark with an elbow. 

“I just want the gold. Nothing more.” Dark stated. 

“Then work with them and we’ll get it. 

“Fine.” Dark sniffed and turned his head. “Google, Bing, come here.” 

“I have a feeling that this will work out for us in the end,” Wilford said, puffing out air when Dark just rolled his eyes at him. 

“Yes, Captain?” Google asked when he and Bing were now with them. 

“We’re going after the gold, get your compass,” Dark said and leaned over the edge again. “What direction are we headed?” He called down. The gray Siren glanced toward where the sun was before turning his body and pointing. 

“That way.” 

“Northwest,” Bing stated. 

“We’ll end up passing...our usual location depending on how far away it is,” Google added.

“We have a deal then?” The gray Siren asked. “We lead you to the gold in return for freeing Anti?” 

“Yes, we have a deal,” Dark said.

“Cool! We’ll be right back after we eat.” The gray Siren waved before driving into the water. 

“We’ll be back before the sun leaves.” The masked Siren added and followed the gray one. The purple Siren and light blue one went as well. 

“His name’s JJ, in case you were wondering.” Anti winked at Wilford and laughed when the golden Siren, JJ, started slapping at his arm. “Bye-bye~” Anti giggled as he and JJ were soon too deep in the water to be seen. 

“JJ? That’s a cute name,” Wilford said to himself. 

“Don’t,” Dark said as a warning and walked away. 


	3. Different

“Those humans are very interesting.” Chase said, popping the last piece of his ‘meal’ into his mouth, laying across a flat rock. The Sirens were finishing up eating at the bottom of the sea. “Something about them is...different.” He added as he chewed, licking off the last bit that was on a gray finger.

“They also agreed to the deal fairly easily.” Marvin was cleaning off Robbie’s face with a piece of seaweed both sitting on the far end of the rock. Robbie was tracing the purple markings on his tail while he waited, deciding to start doing the same to Marvin’s green ones when he got bored of his own. “I thought that Dark would have…” Marvin stopped when something clicked in his head. “JJ?” Marvin saw that JJ was sitting in the sand, staring off into the water with a smile. “JJ, did you ‘persuade’ that human to agree with us?” JJ only shrugged and giggled. 

“Someone thinks that the pink human is cute~” Anti teased, swimming around JJ with a laugh. 

“ _ Do not.”  _ JJ protested, using his hands to communicate with them. 

“I mean, he’s not that bad on the eyes.” Anti laid on his side on the sand next to JJ. “Maybe I’ll find out if  _ all  _ of his hair is pink for ya.” Anti winked and laughed when JJ was slapping at his arm, his go-to ‘you’re embarrassing me!’ gesture. 

“This is why you don’t have a mate,” Henrik muttered from his sitting spot. 

“You don’t have a mate, either.” Anti looked over his shoulder and stuck his tongue out at Henrik. 

“I almost had one and that’s more than you’ve ever had.” Henrik huffed. 

“Go choke on a sardine.” Anti flicked his tail towards Henrik. 

“Alright guppies, calm down,” Chase said, getting off the rock and swimming towards them. “We should catch up to those humans and at least learn their names.” 

“I still can’t believe we owe those humans because Anti got caught,” Henrik said as everyone gathered together. “How did that even happen?” 

“It’s complicated.” Anti crossed his arms. 

“Did you get caught up in deciding which human you wanted to seduce before we ate? Is it that time of the moon?” Henrik said in a mocking tone.

“Go dry up!” Anti slapped Henrik with the end of his tail. 

“Hey, hey, hey!” Chase swam between Henrik and Anti before a fight broke out. “Enough, both of you!” Henrik and Anti both slunked down from being scolded. 

“Regardless of how it happened or why; what does matter is that we owe those humans until we get them the gold that was promised and I would like to have that done sooner rather than later,” Marvin said. 

“It’s going to take a while to get to the gold.” Chase stayed where he was, not wanting to risk Henrik and Anti acting out again. “Human ships travel much slower than we do and it might take moons to get there.” 

“Moons!?” Henrik groaned. “What if the gold isn’t even there anymore? What do we do then?” 

“That’s something we’ll have to figure out if it happens,” Marvin said. 

“We’re going on a trip?” Robbie asked, mostly confused about what was going on and only catching a few parts of the discussion. 

“Yep, little guppy, we’re going on a long trip,” Chase said. 

“With those humans?” 

“Yep.”

“Are we gonna eat ‘em?” 

“Nope.” 

“We can after giving them the gold,” Henrik said.

“That’s a different conversation,” Marvin said with a chuckle. 

“You’re starting to make me think it’s your time of the moon.” Anti blew a raspberry. 

“I will put you in time-out.” Chase threatened, that being enough to get Anti to curl up in a pout. “You too.” He added to Henrik before he could fully start his laugh. 

“Let’s go see if the humans are lost already.” Marvin swam off first, Robbie and JJ both immediately following. 

“Can I trust you two to behave?” Chase asked.

“Yes.” Henrik and Anti said together. 

“Good. I love you, guppies.” Chase pinched at Henrik’s and Anti’s cheeks, getting groans of protest. Chase chuckled and the three quickly caught up to the other half. 

It didn’t take long for them to find the ship and saw that it was heading in the correct direction. They popped out from the water, except for Anti, who launched himself up and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“We’re back!” He shouted. 

“They’re back.” Wilford chuckled while Dark just grunted and stepped away. 

“Google, ask them about how long it till take to get to the gold.” Dark started giving off orders. “Bing, see how far the nearest market is. CJ, RJ, check the nets and don’t catch a Siren again.” 

“On it!” RJ and CJ both saluted before taking off while Bing and Google just went straight to following their order. 

“Don’t throw me overboard for asking, but why are we working with Sirens?” Bim asked. 

“I’m not exactly sure why I agreed to this, something told me I needed to,” Dark said, seeing the shock in Bim’s face at his honesty. “And now that I have made this choice, we are going through with this. Hopefully, the Sirens lead up to enough gold for us to be able to stay docked for a while.” 

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to stay more than a few days before funds ran out.” Bim rubbed his arm and sighed. 

“At least we will have an excuse to stop by the town, regardless if we get to the gold before or after.” Dark saw that Google was making his way back to him. “You and Yandere go rest, I’m going to have you two take the first night-watch.” 

“Yes, Captain.” Bim nodded and walked away. 

“What’s the plan?” Dark asked Google. 

“They said it’ll most likely take a few moons to get to the gold,” Google said.

“Moons?” 

“I’m assuming they mean months, it makes sense that their time system is different than ours.” Google shrugged. 

“It’s going to take months to get to the gold?” Dark huffed. “This better be worth it.” 

“They say it’s a straight shot from where we are, I can adjust our route so we can hit several market places along the way. It will make the trip a little longer but I don’t think we’ll be able to make it without doing so.”

“I trust you to make the right choices,” Dark stated. “Have the general outline of the route done before we head in for the night. I have Yandere and Bim resting now so it’s preferred to do it right after they wake.” 

“Yes, Captain.” Google walked away as well, leaving Dark to stand alone. 

Dark saw that Wilford was at the edge of the ship, sitting on the ledge and clearly talking to the Sirens, most likely to the one that was called ‘JJ’. Dark didn’t understand Wilford’s sudden fascination with the Sirens. His scars must no longer bother him. 

He shook his head at that thought. That was a little cruel, even for him. 

Perhaps this was Wilford’s way of trying to cope, to find a way to get over what had happened. Perhaps Dark should try the same, but he didn’t want to.

At least not yet. 


	4. Night Talk

Yandere and Bim were talking to each other at the front of the ship. They softly giggled and were standing close to each other. Yandere placed her hand on the edge of the ship and Bim gently placed his own on top of hers, face burning red in the dim lights that the lanterns gave off. Yandere flipped her hand so that they could entwine their fingers. There were more giggles as they pressed their foreheads together. 

Bim yelped and Yandere went stiff when they heard someone clear their throat. They were both blushing hard when they say Dark standing a few yards away, hand behind his back and looking unaffected by catching them. 

“We-We were-uh-”

“You’re dismissed. Have a good night.” Dark stated in a flat tone. 

“Good night.” Yandere took Bim’s wrist and the two ran off. Dark could hear the giggles returning when they went into the lower part of the living quarters. 

Dark now took their place, staring off into the open water and he inhaled deeply, holding it for a second before letting it come out between almost closed lips. It was going to be a bit until the twins got up for their watch and that should be plenty of time for Dark to gather himself and recover from that...dream.

He knew there was a chance of those memories coming back up in his sleep due to their current ‘deal’ with the Sirens. Dark had hoped it would have been at least a little subtle, but it seems like nothing was going to be easy for him for the next year by the looks of Google’s charts. The ship’s Guidance System was showing that it would be at least a week until they reached the next marketplace. Dark decided that he was going to buy a keg of beer for himself and lock himself in his quarters with it until it was gone. 

Dark glanced down into the water right beneath him, knowing that the Sirens were down there. They were close and were going to stay close until the deal was done. Dark tried to see if he could remember what the looked like and was their names were. If he was going to be stuck with them, he might as well be able to tell them apart. 

The gray one was Chase. The green was Marvin. The purple was Robbie. The light blue was Henrik. The gold was JJ. The black one was-

“Hello?” 

Anti.

“What?” Dark didn’t look towards where Anti was. 

“What are you up to?” Anti was floating on his back next to the boat. 

“Watching.” 

“Watching what? The water? Do you see some fish?” 

“What do you want?” 

“I’m bored.”

“And that affects me, because?” 

“Can I come up there?” 

“What!?” Dark finally looked towards where Anti was. The lack of lighting and the water actually made Anti look like he was just a human going for a swim. His eyes were closed as he laughed and his chest moved with each sound that was made. Anti’s laughter was strangely...soft. 

“Can I climb up the chain and sit with you?” Anti asked, eyes opening and the sight of deep, black eyes snapped Dark out of his thought of human-like qualities for Anti. 

Dark was going to say no, to keep the Siren as far away from him as he could. But some disturbing curiosity clawed at his chest. A sick need to see the Siren closer, to be able to know the full detail of the creature. He wanted to see what could so easily kill him. 

Dark didn’t speak, he only nodded his head and that was enough of an answer for Anti. He could hear the chain clanging as Anti climbed and Dark gave himself a note to pull that anchor up all the way from now on so that the Sirens couldn’t come on board whenever they pleased. 

“That’s close enough,” Dark said, seeing that Anti was only a few feet away from him, sitting on the ledge of the ship with his tail bending as if there were legs under the scales. Dark found himself staring at the tail. Why would the tail need to be able to bend in such a way? Sirens didn’t have knees, so why did it look like they bent as if they did. The tail itself was admittedly very beautiful. The green scales softly reflected the light and almost looked to shift into different shades of green with each small movement it made. It wasn’t enough to change the whole tail’s color, but it was somewhat fascinating to watch and the black markings almost looked matte in comparison to the scales, as if they had been painted on rather then being a part of the tail.

“My eyes are up here.” Anti’s giggle, once again, snapped Dark from his thoughts. “You can touch it if you want.” Anti saw Dark’s hesitation. “Here,” Anti reached out towards Dark’s hand. “You need to go with the-” Anti stopped when Dark jumped back and was now pointing a knife towards Anti’s face. “Really?” Dark stayed silent. “I thought you were one of the smarter humans. You know that we’re not going to hurt you or your crew. We literally can’t. Or has your ‘expert’ not explained how a debt work?” 

“A debt?” Dark slowly lowered his knife. 

“Yes. A debt.” Anti crossed his arms and looked out into the water. 

“How are we to know you won’t break the deal as soon as you’re hungry and not in the mood to go look for other humans?” Dark asked, not expecting Anti to look at him as if he just said something extremely offensive. 

“We do not break deals.” Anti spat out. 

“You kill humans, breaking a deal isn’t far off from that.”

“When Sirens kill humans we are doing it to eat and survive when humans kill each other you do it for greed.” Anti’s hand went to his neck. “And at least we’re quick when we do it.” 

That was when Dark finally noticed what was on Anti’s neck. There was a thick scar traveling across it as if someone tried to slit it. As if someone tried to kill him and make it hurt. Dark glanced at his own body and saw his scars and he remembered how he got most of them. Anti wasn’t wrong about human greed. 

“I’ll go.” Anti used his hands to push himself off of the ledge and he dove into the water before Dark could even open his mouth. 

“Dark? You out there?” Wilford called out. 

“Yeah,” Dark called back. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I...yeah.” Dark turned away from the water and went back towards the living quarters. 


	5. Sudden Rush

“He pointed a knife at you!?” Chase’s back fin popped up, gills flaring. 

“It’s fine.” Anti was sitting on the sand, arms crossed while Marvin was using a collection of urchin spikes to pick out the tangles in his hair. 

“Is it?” Marvin asked. “You’ve been pouting since we’ve gotten up and it’s almost high-sun.” 

“If he hurt you-”

“He didn’t hurt me.” Anti stopped Chase’s threat. “I just didn’t think he’d be so scared.” 

“We’re Sirens, it’s not surprising that they’d be wary.” Marvin ran his hands through Anti’s hair when he was satisfied. 

“I thought he was different.” Anti puffed out his cheeks. 

“He must be if you’re willing to put up with him for a whole Cycle,” Marvin said, starting to use the urchin spikes on his own hair. 

“He won’t last a Cycle if he threatens Anti again.” Chase swam over to Marvin and took the urchin. 

“You know you can’t do that,” Marvin said, closing his eyes as Chase starting working the tangles from his hair. 

“Maybe I went too far by saying he could feel my scales,” Anti said. “Maybe touching scales is something more serious for humans.” 

“Humans don’t have scales to touch,” Chase said. 

“Maybe they relate it to something else they do have.” Marvin kept his eyes closed as he spoke. 

“They have hair on their legs, although sometimes they don’t.” Chase clicked his tongue as he thought. 

“Maybe just touching legs, in general, is weird for them. They probably think out tails are like that.” Marvin suggested.

“That’s not too far off.” Anti giggled. 

“I found one! I found one!” Robbie was happily squeaking with JJ and Henrik following him, a live urchin in his hands. 

“Be careful with that, you’re going to poke yourself.” Chase stopped picking and Marvin made a face of disappointment. 

“I got ‘em.” Anti swam over to Robbie and took the urchin. “How did it take so long to find one?” He asked as he tore the urchin in half. 

“Robbie kept getting distracted by small fish,” Henrik stated. “And JJ hasn’t had his head on since we’ve met the humans.” 

“ _Choke on a bone.”_ JJ blew bubbles in the water towards Henrik. 

“Here, Robbie, pass these out.” Anti gave Robbie the edible insides of the urchin. Five little orange pieces. “I’ll go without today.” 

“You sure?” Robbie asked. 

“Yeah, not feelin’ it.” Anti shrugged and worked on breaking the urchin into smaller pieces. Robbie swam around and gave the others some of the ‘meat’, all popping it into their mouths as soon as they got it. 

“Did you find a different urchin?” Henrik asked when he saw Chase and Marvin. 

“We found a leftover piece from yesterday,” Chase answered, Marvin now just enjoying himself. 

“My hair’s already done. I’ll take care of Robbie.” Anti gave a piece of urchin to JJ and Henrik before going back to Robbie and having him sit in front of him. 

“How do humans get urchins?” Robbie asked as Anti started to work on his hair.

“Maybe they get them with those rope trap of theirs,” Anti suggested. 

“Those are too big to get an urchin,” Henrik said and looked at JJ when he poked at his arm. 

“ _Help?”_ JJ asked with a small smile. 

“Yeah, sure.” Henrik didn’t question it and picked JJ’s hair. 

“Do you think they use old ones.” Robbie scrunched up his nose. 

“They’d smell a lot worse if they did.” Chase chuckled. 

“They must use something, the woman, Yandere, I believe her name is, has long hair that looks cleanly picked,” Marvin said. 

“She does have really pretty hair,” Chase said and leaned down to press a kiss to Marvin’s forehead. “Not as pretty as yours though.” 

“Of course.” Marvin chuckled.

“Gross.” Anti and Robbie both made faces. 

“Since when are you worried about your hair this much?” Henrik asked when JJ was touching every spot that had been picked. 

“I think I might know why~” Anti giggled. 

“Gross.” It was Henrik’s turn to make a face. 

“Don’t be such a carp,” Anti said.

“I’m not being a carp, I’m being realistic,” Henrik said. “What’s to say the humans won’t try to kill us when they get the gold and again, there’s a chance there isn’t any gold, how do you think they’d react to that? Humans aren’t very understanding when it comes to their gold.” 

“I still think these humans are different,” Anti said.

“All humans are the same.” Henrik scoffed, not seeing the hurt in JJ’s eyes at that comment. 

“They probably think the same of Sirens,” Marvin said, getting everyone to stop and look at him. “Just saying.” Marvin shrugged and took the piece of urchin from Chase, the two switching spots. 

“You’re done,” Henrik said to JJ. 

“ _Want me to do yours?”_ JJ asked. 

“Sure.” Henrik dropped the urchin in his hand, knowing JJ would use the one in his own. 

“We’ll see what the humans are up to and then we’ll go for a full feeding,” Marvin said. 

“It feels like we’re babysitting them,” Henrik said. 

“We basically are. Can’t return a debt if they’re dead.” Chase said. 

“Maybe I’ll use this to get a better knowledge of humans,” Henrik said. “The more we know the easier it’ll be to hunt.” Henrik saw JJ swim around him and use his hand to check his hair. “Already done?” JJ nodded in response. 

“Then we’re off.” Marvin gestured with his tail and the Sirens all swam to where the ship was, popping up like they had the previous day. 

“Hello?” Chase called up, waving when he saw Wilford peeking over the ledge. 

“Hello down there!” Wilford called back with a laugh. 

“ _Come up with me?”_ JJ asked Anti. 

“I’m going to stay down here.” Anti swam over to Robbie. 

“ _Come up with me, please,”_ JJ asked Henrik. “ _Being closer better to study.”_

“I hate that you have a good point.” Henrik looked and saw the anchor to the ship was too high to easily reach. “Can we use the anchor to come up?” Henrik asked. Wilford looked away for a second before giving a thumbs up and heading to the anchor’s crank. 

“Don’t take too long,” Marvin said. 

“Trust me, we won’t.” Henrik climbed up the chain first with JJ right behind him. 

“I didn’t think you could get more beautiful.” Wilford chuckled when JJ settled in front of him. JJ just silently giggled. “And how are you, Henrik?” 

“Here to translate,” Henrik stated in a flat tone. 

“He seems like the fun one,” Wilford said with a hand blocking his mouth from Henrik. JJ giggled again and nodded. 

Henrik just rolled his eyes and decided to look around the ship, wanting a good basic layout of it. He stopped when he saw one of the humans, sitting with a smaller one, and was wrapping his arm with what looked like a white cloth. Henrik hadn’t bothered learning all the names like the others had and he starting to regret that choice. 

“Try to keep this dry, okay?” The human said. “You don’t want to risk an infection.” 

“Okay.” The smaller human nodded their head. 

“Who’s he?” Henrik found himself asking. 

“That’s Edward, our medic,” Wilford answered. 

“Medic?” Henrik couldn’t keep his eyes off of...Edward. 

“He takes care of us. If we get hurt, he makes sure we heal.” Wilford explained. 

“He’s your healer,” Henrik stated. There was a weird and sudden rush of heat going to his face. Sirens didn’t have much heat to them and the fact it was all crawling to his cheeks was strange. 

“I guess you could call him that.” Wilford chuckled. 

Edward watched as the smaller human took off and he ended up making eye-contact with Henrik. He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head and waved with his other hand. Henrik found that he waved back. 

He had no idea what was happening to him and he was going to need to talk to Chase and Marvin about this later. 


	6. Beginning to Learn

_ Either you obey my orders or you get off this ship and swim with those monsters! _

Dark woke up with a gasp and his entire body jerking in a fearful flinch. He took a moment to catch his breath and realized he had dozed off of his desk. 

“Fantastic.” Dark grumbled to himself. 

Dark stood up with a grunt, stretching out the soreness in his back and he went over to a mirror that was attached to a wall. He took a rag out of a small bucket of rainwater and wiped his face with his, cleaning out his eyes and helping fully wake him up. After using a different rag to dry his face, Dark grabbed a comb and fixed his hair. He adjusted his clothing and made sure he looked like he hasn’t just taken a nap rather than checking the inventory count. 

Dark took a deep breath and went to the door of his headquarters, stepping out of the room and looking down to see where his crew was and what they were doing. He wasn’t sure how to feel when he saw that the edges of his ship were covered in Sirens. 

Great.

Dark went down the steps and the first little ‘group’ he saw was Edward talking with the Siren Henrik, the Siren they had learned was basically their medic but was referred to as a ‘healer’. 

“It’s magic mostly.” Henrik was explaining, pointing at a small cut on Edward’s arm that had happened a few days before. A simple scrape from tripping. “I can close the wound and can prevent scars.” Henrik placed his hand on Edward’s arm and took it away. 

“It’s gone.” Edward held his arm close to his face, trying to see if he could find any part of it left. 

“Scars usually happen if we’re not trained or skilled enough to prevent them and we can’t get rid of them either.” 

“That’s amazing!” Edward’s praise made Henrik’s face become a darker shade.

“It’s nothing really.” Henrik giggled. 

Dark kept going and went straight past Wilford and JJ, a sheet of paper between them that JJ was using to write on. He did not want to hear Wilford flirt with a literal man-eater. There wasn’t anything he could do to make Wilford stop. He was just as stubborn as Dark was. 

“How is your hair not tangled?” Yandere asked as she and Bim examined Marvin’s hair. 

“It shouldn’t be this soft,” Bim added. “With how long you’re in saltwater it should be dry and damaged.” 

“We use urchins to keep the tangles out and magic can go a long way.” Marvin chuckled. “How do you do the same to your hair? It has to be hard to get urchins every day on this ship.” 

“We don’t use urchins.” Yandere chuckled. “We use combs or brushes.” 

“Combs or brushes?” Marvin hummed. “Never heard of that kind of fish.” 

“They’re usually made from plastic,” Bim said and he and Yandere laughed when Marvin made a disgusted face. 

“A month is a moon, a year is a cycle.” Bing listed off with his fingers while Google was writing, Chase nodded when Bing said something correct. “What’s a day?” Bing saw that chase just blinked at him. “Um...when the sun goes up and then back down?”

“A full-sun,” Chase answered. 

“So you use the sun to measure shorter lengths of time?” Google asked. 

“Yes.” Chase smiled.    
“Interesting.” Google went back to writing. 

Dark paused his walking when he found the rest of his crew and the Sirens. Robbie and Anti were sitting together while CJ and RJ were looking at Robbie’s tail. Robbie flicked the end of his tail and laughed when CJ and RJ bounced away from it. They waited a second before going back in and continuing their examination. Robbie flicked his tail again and Anti joined him in laughing this time. Anti caught that Dark was watching them and he tapped Robbie’s shoulder to get his attention. 

“Do you want to show them your flips?” Anti suggested. 

“Yeah!” Robbie giggled and jumped off the ship, CJ and RJ leaned over to watch as Robbie moved through the water and launched himself out of it, flipping in the air. CJ and RJ clapped after each trick. 

“Do you need something?” Anti asked as Dark sat down on the ledge himself, maintaining the same distance from their late-night talk a few nights ago. “Are you sure you don’t want your knife pointed at me, or a gun?” Anti scoffed. 

“No,” Dark said without looking at Anti. 

“Look who’s finally starting to get it.” Anti giggled a little. 

“We’re due to dock at a market in the morning,” Dark stated. “We’ll most likely spend the whole day there.” 

“Sounds thrilling.” Anti patted at the edge of the ship, needing something to do with his hands. “I’ll let Chase and Marvin know.” 

“Okay…” Dark tapped his boots against the deck before finally looking at Anti, seeing the scar move when Anti swallowed. “May I ask you something?” 

“Sure.” Anti shrugged. 

“Are you willing to tell me how you got your scar?” Dark asked.

“Are you willing to tell me about yours?” Anti asked back. 

“That’s fair.” Dark let out an awkward puff of air. 

“Anything else you want to ask?” 

“Do you actually use urchins for your hair?” Dark tried to get far from the previous question. 

“You don’t?” Anti pointed at Dark’s head. “There’s no way you don’t.” 

“I use a comb.” Dark ran a hand through his hair. 

“A comb?” Anti made a face. “You should try urchin. They’re also really tasty.” 

“Never had one,” Dark said.

“You-oh hold on.” Anti suddenly dove off the side of the ship. Dark watched as he went straight into the water. He found himself watching Robbie for a bit until he heard the anchor chain raddle. “I found a big one.” Anti giggled and tore the urchin in his hand in half. Dark looked at his own hands in shock at Anti being able to do that. 

“That doesn’t hurt?” Dark asked as Anti worked on cleaning out the urchin, saving the outside of it. 

“What doesn’t hurt?” Anti asked.

“You just tore apart that urchin like it was nothing.” 

“It’s a talent.” Anti giggled and held out a piece of the urchin’s meat towards Dark. “Here.” Dark hesitated before taking the offering, biting into it and finding that it practically melted in his mouth. 

“Holy shit.” Dark cursed softly, eating the rest of the piece. 

“Told you.” Anti popped a piece of it into his own mouth. 

“Maybe I’ll buy some at the market tomorrow,” Dark said and took another piece of the urchin. 

“I can just get you some more...if you’re okay with that.” Anti chewed on his second piece. 

“Depending on the price, I just might.” Dark chuckled, not realizing that Anti had given him the last piece of the urchin since he assumed it was split in half. “Um...thank you.” 

“No problem.” Anti softly smiled. Dark found himself smiling back, he chuckled a little more and looked to check his crew, seeing that Wilford was looking at him. Wilford has a large smirk on his face and he wiggled his eyebrows at Dark. Dark went stiff and he quickly stood up. 

“I need to finish preparing everything for tomorrow,” Dark stated and walked away, hating that he could feel heat crawling up his neck and most likely making his cheeks flush a little. 


	7. Shopping

“Braid or no braid?” Wilford asked, holding pieces of Yandere’s hair out for Bim to see. 

“Braid, the men in this town really like braids,” Bim said as he worked on tying Yandere’s sleeves, having the top of them poof out as far as they could. 

“I’ll do two on each side, or would that be too much?” Wilford grabbed a comb and started parting Yandere’s hair. 

“I think that would look really good on her,” Bim said. 

“You think anything looks good on me.” Yandere giggled and winked. 

“I-I…” Bim’s cheeks flushed. 

“Are you camouflaging her?” Chase asked Edward, gesturing towards RJ and CJ who were looking at makeup and deciding on colors. 

“You could call it that.” Edward shrugged. “It’s a little trick we use to help with prices at the market.” 

“Why is it only Yandere?” Marvin asked. 

“She works best in this market. We use someone else for different ones.” Edward explained. 

“Do you seduce the market people for food?” Henrik asked bluntly. 

“N-Not really.” Edward awkwardly laugh. “Like, we’ll flirt and hint at things for haggling reasons but we don’t actually...well not always...it’s complicated.” 

“I think I get it?” Chase titled his head. 

“We’re going to need to get enough supplies to last us at least three months,” Google said to Dark. “We only have enough for a few weeks, so we’ll need to stock up.”

“Three months? I thought the next market place was closer.” Dark tried to do quick math in his head while looking at his notes.

“It is, but we’ll be going too fat out of the way to the route and will make our little ‘deal’ last another month,” Google stated. 

“We’re not just running out of food. We’re very low on soap as well.” Bing added. “We need a full haul with this trip.” 

“I only counted food inventory,” Dark said to himself. “Damn it.” 

“Should we have Yandere and Bim do more than haggle?” Google asked. 

“They might need to.” Dark sighed. 

“You need gold?” Anti asked when Google and Bing walked away. 

“We’ll make it work,” Dark stated and walked off himself. 

Anti puffed his cheeks in thought before knocking a pattern on the ship, getting the Sirens to look at him. He gestured with his head and they all jumped back into the water, much to the humans’ confusion. 

“What’s going on?” Chase asked when they were sure the humans couldn’t hear. 

“We might need to help them get stuff,” Anti said. 

“They’re using seducing techniques for food,” Henrik said. 

“They also need soap, whatever that is,” Anti added. 

“We’re going to the market?” Robbie asked, perking up. 

“They’re not going to be able to do this alone,” Marvin said. “They said only Yandere’s seducing works here.”

“Do you think it’s the hair?” Chase asked. “Wilford was asking about braids.” 

“We can braid out hair, Marvin’s would do really good with this,” Anti said. 

“We’re going to the market!” Robbie happily squealed. 

Back up on the ship, CJ and RJ were looking over the ledge of the ship.

“What do you think that was about?” RJ asked. 

“Secret meeting.” CJ softly said. 

“Land!” Bing suddenly shouted and that got everyone moving. They went to their positions. CJ and RJ went to the anchor wheel, hands on it and ready to lower, Wilford, Bim, and Yandere went to the ropes to control the sails, Google went to the steering wheel of the ship with Dark next to him and Bing climbed higher up for a better look. 

It was fairly easy to dock the ship, a routine they have done time and time again that barely took a thought and was more muscle memory if anything else. 

“Everyone knows their orders?” Dark asked as everyone finished putting themselves together. 

“Yes, Captain.” They responded. 

“Take more than one trip, take your time. I want to sail off by morning but if we have to spend longer than that, we will.” 

“Yes, Captain.” 

“Take off.”

“Yes, Captain.” 

Dark watched his crew take off, most of them laughing as they went off into pairs. Bim with Yandere, Google with Bing, CJ with RJ, and Wilford with Edward, the two sticking close to RJ and CJ as well but letting them feel as if they were on their own. Dark went straight for the fishing area of the market, casually strolling as fish was tossed around him. The smell reminded him a lot of his childhood so he never minded going to this part. Wilford was the only other one that didn’t mind the smell. It reminded Dark of a much simpler time, when his biggest worry was which toy he wanted to play with and if Wilford wanted to play as well. Before he met…

“Are these urchins?” Dark forced himself to get out of his thoughts when he saw the display. 

“Yes, they are, my boy!” The seller was a large man with an even larger laugh. “I got shucked and unshucked.” 

“How much is inside of an urchin?” Dark asked, seeing the high price for the urchins. It was fairly cheaper to get the whole ones, but it still wasn’t cheap at all. 

“Each of these suckers got five pieces like these in ‘em.” The man gestured to the ‘meat’ of the urchin. 

“Five?” Dark found himself remembering eating three parts of the urchin. Anti had given him more than a fair share of it. Perhaps it was because Anti had some himself already that morning or it being Dark’s first tasting. He didn’t like there being an unbalance. “I’ll take an unshucked one.” Dark reached into his coin pouch and paid for the urchin, being given it in a paper sack to prevent him from getting poked. 

“Have a good day!” The man smiled brightly. 

“Thank you.” Dark flashed a quick smile himself and continued down the fish area. He shouldn’t have spent that money on something so small but he needed to return the favor. He refuses to owe a Siren anything. 

“Thief! Thief!” 

Dark went stiff. Who got caught? Who was in danger?

He took off towards the shouting and stopped when he saw that Yandere and Bim were standing at a display and were fine. Dark saw further down that Google and Bing were looking around as well. CJ and RJ were with Edward and Wilford at a different display. It wasn’t them. 

“Stop them! Thief!” 

Dark saw several people running through the market and he rubbed at his eyes. He did not see that. Others can have green hair. 

“To the ship,” Dark said to Bim and Yandere, gesturing to the others. 

“You saw that too, right?” Bim asked as they rushed to the ship. 

“We have to be seeing things. There’s no way it was them.” Yandere said. 

“We’ll need to give the market time to calm down before going back out,” Dark stated, ignoring the questions. 

“Did those thieves look familiar to you?” Wilford asked when he and the others caught up. 

“Dyed hair happens.” Dark climbed up onto the deck of the ship. “It…” Dark’s voice cut off when he saw who was on the ship. 

“What the shit?” Bim cursed, the rest of the crew climbing on and seeing the sight. 

“I told you to let me do the work, but no, you had to try to be ‘the big fish’.” Anti scoffed at Henrik. 

“What matters is we got a lot.” Henrik had his arms crossed. 

“Do you think we got too much?” Marvin asked, gesturing at the large pile of supplies and food. 

“I don’t know-may-oh! Hi guys!” Chase happily greeted the crew when he saw that they were there. 

“They’re…” Bing’s jaw dropped. 

“They’re standing.” Google finished. 

“Legs.” Dark couldn’t think of anything else as he stared at the Sirens on his ship. The  _ standing  _ Sirens. They had legs. 


	8. What's on the Menu?

Dark kept staring at the strange sight in front of him. There was no way this was happening. How could this be happening? 

The Sirens. The  _ Sirens.  _ The  _ water  _ creatures were standing on  _ legs.  _

They all looked strangely human with legs, a quick glance and they’d look like they just had their bodies painted. They were practically naked except for a strange, cloth-like wrapping around their hips. 

“How much did you take?” Yandere was the first to break the human’s stunned silence and she went over to the pile. 

“Should we have gotten more?” Chase asked as the other humans gathered around, Dark being the last to come over. 

“You have legs?” Dark’s question was more of a statement. 

“Kind of.” Marvin shrugged. “We can make temporary ones with magic.” 

“Is it just your group specifically or is it all Sirens?” Google asked. 

“All Sirens have the ability to make legs but some are better at it than others,” Marvin explained. 

“I need to get my book.” Google took off into the living quarters. 

“We’ll be right back,” Bing said and followed Google. 

“I didn’t think it was possible for you to get any cuter.” Wilford chuckled at a blushing JJ. JJ just giggled and lightly slapped Wilford’s arm. 

“Google will probably ask later, but what are the...coverings, made of?” Edward asked Henrik, quickly looking up when he realized he had been staring. 

“It’s mostly made from what we filter through our gills and any dead skin and scales,” Henrik answered, fingers rubbing the wrap. “It kind of feels like your clothing. You...You can feel it, if-if you want.” 

“Oh, o-okay.” Edward and Henrik were both bright red in the face. 

“That’s not food, Rob-ster” Anti moved the bar of soap away from Robbie’s mouth. “Ask Chase if we’re going hunting soon.” 

“Okay!” Robbie bounced away, going towards Chase and passing Dark, who was making his way to Anti. 

“Here.” Dark and Anti ended up speaking at the same time and both held an urchin out towards each other. Anti started laughing and Dark opened his mouth in disbelief. 

“I guess we both had the same thought.” Anti chuckled. “More for us to eat.” 

“I was trying to repay you,” Dark said.

“Repay me?” Anti raised a brow. “For an urchin?” 

“Did you steal all of this?” Dark tried to change the subject.

“They wanted coins and we don’t have those.” Anti bent down and grabbed a loaf of bread, dropping it almost immediately. “Some of it was hard to carry. Are some of your foods made hot to prevent other humans from taking it?” 

“We cook most of our food so it’s edible,” Dark said. 

“That’s weird,” Anti muttered. 

“Why did you steal all of this food and supplies?” 

“You guys needed it.” Anti bent down and worked on sorting the items, mostly making two piles of ‘food’ and ‘not food’. 

“We could have gotten what we needed ourselves,” Dark said as Anti move back and forth. 

“We wanted to help.” 

“We don’t need help.”

“You had planned on stealing, we just joined in.” 

“ _ We  _ had planned for  _ us  _ to steal. Not you.” 

“Do humans not help each other?” Anti stopped and was now looking at Dark. “Does it go against something we’re unaware of?” Dark saw genuine concern in Anti’s eyes, showing that he wasn’t joking or teasing. 

“Humans are stubborn.” Dark sighed and grabbed one of the bars of soap from the pile. “We do accept help but some of us are more open to it than others.” Dark found a bucket and started grabbing the other soap bars and placing them in it. “We want to believe that we can take care of ourselves.” 

“What about your pod? Do humans not ask for help from them?” Anti asked. 

“My crew and I will ask for help with certain things.” Dark saw that Anti caught what Dark was doing and started gathering soap as well. 

“What about parents? Chase and Marvin always ask if we need help.” 

“Chase and Marvin are your parents?” Dark paused and looked over at the two that were mentioned. They were answering questions from Bing and Google. 

“Technically.” Anti chuckled. “They found me and my brothers when we were pups, Robbie was found a few years after we were.” 

“What happened to your…other parents?”

“Sharks got ‘em.” Anti’s shoulders dropped. “They got our whole pod and Robbie…” Anti fully stopped and made a face. He shook his head and went back to grabbing soap. “Are you all family as well?”

“CJ and RJ are twins and the rest of us just found each other.” Dark wasn’t planning on saying any more than that, he figured what he said was enough to be fair. 

“Does being twins mean they were born in the same litter?” Anti asked. 

“That’s one way of putting it.” Dark found himself chuckling a little. “I’m guessing that means, you, Henrik, and JJ are triplets?” 

“That’s one way of putting it.” Anti giggled. 

“Anti!” Robbie squealed and rushed over to Anti. “We’re gonna get food!” 

“I’m coming.” Anti chuckled and Robbie rushed back over to the other Sirens, who were gathered and talking with each other. “We can come back and help finish sorting when we’re done.” Anti offered, placing the soup in his hands in Dark’s bucket.

“Not like we can stop you.” Dark was smiling. 

“We’re not as stubborn as humans.” Anti stuck his tongue out. 

“If you say so.” Dark watched Anti head over to the Sirens and with a quick wave they dove off the edge of the ship. Dark listened to the sound of the water splashing and wasn’t aware of Wilford coming up to him.

“You and Anti seem to be getting along,” Wilford said in a teasing tone. 

“It’s nothing.” Dark handed Wilford the bucket. “I’m just...ensuring that there is no hostility since we’re with them for a whole year.” 

“That’s  _ totally  _ why I’m flirting with JJ as well.” Wilford rolled his eyes.

“We are not flirting.” 

“I know that little smile of yours when you’re all ‘heart-eyes’ for someone.” Wilford winked when Dark crossed his arms and looked away. 

“There is no little smile with the Siren.” 

“Don’t fight your feelings, Dark. We both know how that works out.” There was a painful pause between the two, there was an understanding that only they would know in the silence. 

“Get the others to start sorting and track what we have. We’ll head back to the market for anything that’s missing in the morning.”

“Yes, Captain.” Wilford walked away to tell the others the order, leaving Dark to stare down at the deck, lost in his memories. 


	9. A Detour

“You have to be shitting me.” Google cursed. “Fuck!” He slapped the guidance system with another shout. 

“Maybe it just needs a new magnet?” Bing suggested, crouching down to open the cabinet the machine sat on. The extra supplies for it being kept in there and it was practically empty since it was hard to get spare parts for the guidance system unless you were literally swimming in gold. 

“A new magnet isn’t going to make the screen turn back on!” Google snapped. 

“At least I’m offering something besides cursing.” Bing blew a raspberry before going into the cabinet, looking for a magnet anyway. 

“We need to find Dark and let him know what’s happening,” Google stated, grunting when Bing ignored him. “Bing.” Google bent down. 

“What? You’re not done yelling at me?” Bing scoffed. 

“That’s not-Bing.” Google squeezed into the cabinet as well. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“Well, you did.” Bing rolled to his back, puffing out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout. 

“I’m sorry~” Google chuckled and moved so that he was laying on top of Bing. “Is there anything that I can do to make it up to you?” 

“I can think of a few-” Bing slapped his hands over his mouth to stop a yelp from coming out when the top of the cabinet was knocked on. 

“Fu-” Google slammed his head on to cabinet before scrambling out of it. “H-Hey, Dark.” Google greeted, rubbing his now sore head. 

“I heard yelling,” Dark stated. 

“The guidance system is malfunctioning,” Google said. “We don’t have the parts to fix it but we have spare coins from us not buying anything at the last market. We should be able to get the parts. I can use our charts to mark out where the nearest market could be, but they’re outdated so there’s a chance I can be off and it’ll extend our overall trip by maybe a month.” 

“Let me talk with Wilford, go ahead and work out what you can and find Bing to help,” Dark ordered. 

“Yes, Captain.” Google nodded and as soon as Dark was out of the room, he flopped down to the ground with a laughing Bing. 

“Wilford,” Dark called out, heading to the edge of the ship where Wilford was sitting with JJ. “May we have a moment of privacy?” He asked JJ. JJ nodded and got up, walking over to where Chase and Anti were helping Bim gut some larger fish. Dark still wasn’t used to seeing the Sirens with legs, it was going to take more than a week for that to fully settle in. Dark did a quick look around to see what his crew and the Sirens were up to, Wilford crossing his legs and waiting, knowing what Dark doing. 

Bim and Yandere were with Anti, Chase, and now JJ with the fish for dinner. Henrik was talking with Edward, looking confused at their conversation. CJ and RJ were sitting on the deck with Robbie, who was letting them look at his hands, claws fully extended. Marvin climbed up and pulled himself over the ledge of the ship and went to Chase and Anti. Dark turned away and not seeing Marvin getting the other Sirens to follow him into the water. 

“The guidance system is malfunctioning,” Dark stated.

“Again?” Wilford groan. “We need to just buy a new one.” 

“We might be able to,” Dark said. “After not needing to buy most of our supplies there might be enough coin to get one.” 

“Google and Bing would love that.” Wilford chuckled. “What’s the plan then?”

“We can use the charts to either continue on our current route and fix the guidance system on our next stop or get to the closest market and fix it there,” Dark said. “The problem with the first choice is it would extend our time with the Sirens for at least a month.” 

“Oh no, a whole ‘nother month.” Wilford placed a hand on his cheeked and forced out a gasp. 

“Don’t get too attached,” Dark warned. “There’s a chance they’ll run as soon as we’re done.” 

“I don’t think they will.” Wilford stood up. “They’re different, you know they are.” 

“We thought the same thing about  _ them _ .” Dark spat out the last word. 

“I won’t let you get hurt, I promise.” Wilford placed a hand on Dark’s shoulder. 

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Dark muttered. Wilford just gave Dark’s shoulder a squeeze, neither of them seeing the water shifting nearby. 

Under the water, Marvin had the other Sirens with him and he was pointing as he spoke. 

“They’re coming from that way, I think we can stop them short.” Marvin was talking about other Sirens he had seen on his search for a mussel. “There’s two grown ones and a pup.” 

“That’s a small pod,” Anti said, JJ nodding in agreement.

“They might have done what Marvin and Chase did. They might have run away and found a pup.” Henrik stated. 

“I’m pretty sure the grown ones are littermates, they have the exact same markings,” Marvin said. 

“ _ We can offer to help find other humans _ ,” JJ said. 

“We-there they are.” Marvin took off and had the other Sirens following him. They stopped in front of the new Sirens. 

Marvin was right when he said the two grown ones were almost identical except for their main color. One was red while the other was purple, the had black markings that framed their faces, traveled down their arms and sides, and became a swirl around their tails. The pup was dark blue with black markings as well, they were lines with dots at both ends covering his whole body, the ones surrounding his face almost looked like a heart. 

The red one moved the pup behind him while the purple on hunched up, ready to fight if needed. 

“Is this your hunt?” The red Siren asked. 

“Not really,” Chase said. “We owe them, they’re kind of our humans for a while.” The three Sirens perked up and relaxed at that phrasing. 

“You have humans as well?” The red Siren allowed the pup to move so he was next to him. “Ours lives in a ship on land.”

“Ships can be on land?” Anti asked. 

“He’s very...crafty.” The purple Siren tried to find the right word.

“Is he good with human tech?” Henrik asked. 

“He’s very good at it.” The pup giggled. “He makes new stuff.” 

“Our human’s guidance system, their thing that shows them where to go, is broken. Could your human fix it?” Henrik asked. 

“Easily.” The red siren chuckled. 

“How are is your human?” Chase asked. 

“Just beyond the sight-line. We just headed out.” The red Siren smiled. “I’m Mare, by the way. This is my brother Phantom and my pup Blank.” 

“Hello!” Blank greeted happily while Phantom just waved.

“I’m Chase, this is my mate Marvin and out pups Anti, Henrik, JJ, and Robbie.”

“Hi!” Robbie waved with both hands while the others used one. 

“We’ll get our human’s attention and have them follow us while we follow you,” Marvin said. 

“Sounds like a plan,” Mare said.

The three new Sirens waited as the others went to the top of the water, all shouting and splashing until the humans came to the edge of the boat and looked at them. The Sirens kept saying to follow them and after a lot of nudging from Wilford and a mention of a ‘human that can fix their tech’, Dark agreed and told Google to turn the ship. 


	10. Meeting Madness

“Land!” Bing called out. 

“It that just a giant cave?” Wilford used his hand to shield the sun from his eyes and looked at the landmass the Sirens were swimming towards. 

“It’s a giant hole in a mountain,” Edward said. 

“There’s plenty of land surrounding it,” Yandere added.

“Ship?” CJ pointed as he spoke. 

“There’s a ship on land?” RJ looked at Dark for an answer. 

“It doesn’t look like a wreck, it looks like it’s been placed there.” Dark chewed on his lip. “Why would that be?” He decided that was a question for later when they were getting close to the strange island. “Drop anchor! We’ll take the side boats the rest of the way!” Dark shouted out his order. 

“There’s more Sirens.” Bim waved Dark back over to the edge of the ship. “There’s three more. Two adults and one that looks like the same age as Robbie.” 

“Have everyone arm themselves with a pistol better safe than sorry,” Dark said. Bim nodded and walked away, leaving Dark to watch the Sirens.

“That is a ship on land,” Chase said as he and the other Sirens made legs and walked up the little shore of the island. 

“Your human made this?” Marvin asked. 

“He’s crafty.” Mare shrugged with a smile. 

“Hey! Mad!” Phantom cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. There was a shared laugh after they saw a face pop up in the top window that immediately ducked away. 

“I was going to have Blank get him, but I guess that works.” Mare chuckled. “Are those your humans?” Mare gestured towards the three smaller boats heading towards them. 

“I bet keeping track of all of them is fun,” Phantom said, voice heavy with sarcasm. 

“It hasn’t been too bad so far,” Chase said. “You’re actually the first Sirens we’ve run into.” 

“How long have you’ve had them?” Mare asked.

“Almost half a moon,” Chase answered. 

“One of you must be a persuader for them to trust you so soon.” Mare saw that JJ tapped the tip of his nose and silently giggled. 

“How long have you had your human?” Marvin asked. 

“We’ve been with him for almost three moons,” Mare said.

“Three moons of my brother is Mad being idiots.” Phantom chuckled glaring at Mare when he slapped a hand over his mouth. 

“We found him about four moons ago,” Mare said. 

“Chase, Marvin, what’s going on?” Dark asked as he and his crew were now on the land and walking to the Sirens. 

“They have a human that can fix the guidance system,” Henrik said to Edward. 

“I told you we were handling it ourselves,” Edward said. He saw the look of hurt in Henrik’s eyes. “Thank you though,” Edward added in a softer voice, getting Henrik to smile again. 

“A human lives in that ship?” Dark asked, everyone unaware of Blank slowly heading towards Google, eyes on the arm covered with a sleeve and wide with curiosity.

“Yes, his name is Mad and-” Mare stopped his answer when there was a sudden shout from Google. 

“Google, don’t!” Bing grabbed Google’s arm, a pistol aimed at Blank’s face. 

“No!” Mare launched himself towards the two, throwing Bing aside and tackling Google to the ground, hands pressed against his neck. Mare was hunched over, teeth showing and clearly trying to hold himself back from just biting down. Google tried to gasp out and starting hitting at Mare’s arms, nothing coming from that. Wilford took out his own gun but JJ grabbed his arm and when Dark tried, Chase and Marvin grabbed him and Anti stood in front of him.

“Mare!” A human rushed out of the ship. “Mare, get off of him, Mare!” 

Mare was breathing hard and he slowly released the pressure on Google’s neck, turning his head to look at the new human. Mare’s shoulders slumped down and he crawled off of Google, going to Blank and scooping up the stunned pup. 

“I thought they were humans, not  _ Hunters _ .” Mare spat and walked off with Blank. Phantom hissed towards Google before following Mare. The human joined them as well, crouching down and talking with them.

“Googs!” Bing scrambled over to Google, checking over him. “He’s bleeding! Edward! He’s bleeding!” Edward rushed over as well and saw several small wounds on Google’s neck, nothing deadly but something that will need to be cleaned out unless-

“Henrik, can you heal him?” Edward asked. 

“I can’t.” Henrik looked away. 

“You can’t? You showed me-”

“I can’t!” Henrik went over to Chase and Marvin who had let go of Dark. 

“What the hell was that!?” Dark snapped. “Why didn’t any of you do anything!? What happened to ‘having to keep you safe’!?” 

“He threatened Mare’s pup,” Chase stated while Marvin was holding Henrik in a hug. 

“He tried to kill Google!” Dark shouted. 

“We can’t do anything about it,” Anti said. “We can’t stop a parent’s reaction to their pup being put in danger or harmed.” 

“So you were going to let Google die?” Dark said. 

“We don’t want him to,” Anti said while Chase took Robbie’s hand and he walked over to where Mare and the others were. “What if someone tried to hurt CJ and RJ? Wouldn’t you want to be able to react without being told that you can’t?” 

“That’s...different.” Dark pocketed his weapon. 

“How? While CJ and RJ aren’t as young as Blank is, clearly, they’re still the youngest of you all. Young is young and we don’t go after them.” Anti said. “And Henrik can’t help Google without Mare’s permission.” 

“Is that another part of the ‘Siren Code’?” Dark scoffed. 

“Yes,” Anti answered without missing a beat. 

“Why was he able to tell Mare to stop?” Wilford asked, gesturing towards the stranger who was now making his way towards them. JJ was still holding his arm, the pistol was gone but he didn’t want to let go yet. 

“They must be mates or close to it,” Anti said.

“Mates?” Dark asked. “You believe they’re-” 

“Who the fuck are you and why are you on my island?”


	11. Calming Down...Almost

Google stood with a hand over his arm, holding his torn sleeve so that no one could see what was underneath. He was fine, more stunned than anything and he found himself leaning against Bing and grumbling about how he shouldn’t have panicked over what was basically a curious child. Blank had scared him when he had grabbed his arm, his claws had latched to Google’s sleeve when Google jerked in reaction to suddenly being touched. Google moved without thinking, he pulled out his pistol without a thought, he went into action instead of using his head. And he hated that. 

“We were told that we could get our guidance system fixed,” Dark stated to the stranger that the Sirens knew as Mad. 

“Who told you that?” Mad asked, arms crossed and eyes hard in a glare. 

“The Sirens,” Dark said. “The green ones-”

“Your Sirens told our Sirens that told us to follow them and lead us here.” Wilford cut Dark off, knowing Dark would beat around the bush about some wording and Wilford didn’t feel like listening to it. 

“Your Sirens? You’re friends with Sirens and yet you still threaten a pup? A child?” Mad asked.

“We-re not fr-”

“It’s new to us.” Wilford stopped Dark again, feeling that Dark was now glaring at him as well. “Our buddy Google over there also has a thing about his arm and the kid probably scared Google more than he scared him.” Wilford was flashing a bright smile and JJ looked at Mad with wide eyes, clinging to Wilford’s arm and mouthing something. Mad opened his own mouth to say something but Henrik rushed up to him. 

“You’re Mare’s mate, right?” Henrik asked

“I-I-” Mad went stiff and red-faced, any sign of his ‘tough demeanor’ was long gone as he sputtered. 

“Can I heal Google, please.” Henrik pleaded. 

“Y-Yeah, but I-I’m not-” Mad started picking at his fingers as Henrik took off to where Google, Bing, and Edward were. “I’m-” 

“JJ, Anti, come with me.” Marvin knew what Mad was going to say and as long as they didn’t hear it, they were fine to do what they were doing. JJ and Anti both caught the hint and followed Marvin away, leaving Wilford and Dark with Mad. Dark saw that CJ, RJ, Bim, and Yandere had joined where Chase and Robbie had gone to talk with the new Sirens. 

“I’m not his mate.” Mad finally got to say. “We’re-we’re just...we-uh-we…” 

“Are you capable of fixing our guidance system?” Dark asked. 

“Am I capable?” Mad scoffed with a laugh. “The guidance system most of you use is like a child’s building block.” Mad looked over at Mare and his laugh died off before he turned back to Dark and Wilford. “If I fix it will you leave?” Mad asked. “I live like this for a reason.” 

“Yes.” Dark nodded. “You can head to the ship with-”

“I’m not going on your ship,” Mad said. “I think you can understand why I don’t trust you enough to do that.” 

“He’s got a point,” Wilford said. 

“How do we know he won’t break it further?” Dark asked.

“I don’t think that’s possible.” 

“I want you to leave, why would I try making it so you’d be stuck here?” Mad rubbed at his forehead in annoyance. “Plus all of my equipment is here, including spare parts and by the sounds of it, you have none so you need to bring the system to me.” 

“Again, he has a point,” Wilford said. 

“Tell Edward, Google, and Bing to go back to the ship and get the guidance system,” Dark ordered. 

“Yes, Captain.” Wilford chuckled and walked away, making it so it was just Mad and Dark together. 

“You placed a ship on land?” Dark asked after a pause of awkward silence. 

“Yeah,” Mad said. 

“Why?” 

“None of your concern.” 

“That’s fair.” Dark looked around some more. “Is that a garden?”

“I have to eat.” 

“It looks complicated.” 

“It’s easy for me.” 

“I see…” There was another awkward pause, lasting much longer than the previous one. 

“I’m Mad,” Mad said, holding out a hand and sighing when Dark just looked at him. “My name is Mad.” 

“Dark.” Dark took the offered hand and shook it. 

“I figured sharing names would lessen some of the tension.” Mad sniffed. “The Siren pup is Blank, you already know which one is Mare and the other is Phantom.” Dark hesitated but after seeing how Mad had relaxed a good bit when relaying information, he decided to point and list off the names of the Sirens he knew and his crew. 

“Would you just do it already!?” Phantom’s sudden shout had Mad and Dark turning towards him. “You and him are both too smart to be this dumb!” Dark saw how Chase was making a face of regret and Marvin was ushering Robbie away.

“It’s more complicated than-”

“More complicated my magically-produced ass!” Phantom scoffed. “Stop avoiding this! Just give him a shell! It was funny at first but now it’s just pathetic!” Mare said nothing and just turned away. “Ugh!” Phantom shouted again and went to the water. “I’m going to go eat.” Phantom dove into the water and was gone faster than Dark could blink. Blank looked like he was going to follow but Mare placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

“Let him pout,” Mare said. 

“Is that something we should be worried about?” Dark asked. 

“No, Phantom pouts a lot and it sounds like a Siren thing we don’t understand,” Mad said. “I might ask about it later to be sure.” 

“They’re back.” Dark was thankful for the change in subject. 

“What is he holding?” Mad made a face, looking at Google. 

“That’s the guidance system.” 

“That’s the guidance system!?” Mad started to laugh loudly. “How long have you had that? It’s so outdated!” 

“It’s only a few years old.” Dark felt a little protective of his guidance system now. 

“There’s no way!” Mad had to hold his stomach from laughing so loud. “Do you not have anyone that knows tech on your crew?” 

“I have two.” 

“They need to go back to school if they think that’s a valid guidance system.” Mad used a hand to wipe tears from his face. “That’s is hilarious!”

“It’s hilarious?” 


	12. Learning System

“I have this set so that you are able to add new landmarks without it being shown to anyone else using the guidance system,” Mad stated as he gestured at the new machine to Google and Bing. The three were standing outside of Mad’s ‘ship-house’. Mad had looked at the broken guidance system Bing and Google had brought to him and literally tossed it aside. He had gone into the lower level of the ship-house and brought out a newer-looking system. “It mostly relies on the usage of binary coding and you’ll open this compartment and input your coordinates.” 

“Are they talking smart?” Anti asked with a giggle, stepped up next to Dark who had been watching. 

“Very,” Dark answered. 

“Big words?” 

“Gigantic.” Dark held out his word and he and Anti chuckled at that. 

“Can I ask something?” Dark and Anti ended up speaking at the same time and they laughed at for a second. 

“You go first,” Anti said, knowing his question could risk upsetting Dark. 

“I’ve been trying to figure out the whole ‘not being able to stop Mare when he was attacking Google’,” Dark said and Anti made a face, not wanting to argue again. “Since Mare is Blank’s parent, he’s able to react how he wants if Blank is threatened?” Dark looked at Anti and got a head nod. “And Mad was able to stop him because he’s his...well you all assumed, uh…‘mate’. But Mad isn’t Blank’s parent, he’s not related to Blank at all, how would being with Mare change that?” Dark had ‘step-parents’ as a reference but something told him it just wasn’t the same, several things told him that it wasn’t the same. 

“When it comes to taking in a mate while you already have a pup or pups, it’s a little more complicated than just taking a mate.” Anti was thankful the question took a different turn than he had feared. “When Chase and Marvin got together, they were both pup-less...technically.” Anti glanced over at Chase and Dark took note of that. “Because of that, they were able to become mates without having to check with anyone. Mare, on the other hand, has a pup and in order to take in a mate, the pup has to approve of the mate and the mate will then become a full parent of the pup and only a fellow parent of the same pup can tell the other parent what to do during a reaction.” 

“So, because you thought Mad was Mare’s mate, he was able to give permission for Henrik to heal Google since the injury was caused by Mare’s reaction?” Dark wasn’t sure why he wanted to understand but his curiosity was taking over. 

“Exactly,” Anti said. 

“But they’re not mates, how did Mad get Mare to stop?” 

“Mare must like him.” Anti shrugged. “He probably wants to be mates but hasn’t started it yet.” 

“Can humans and Sirens be mates?” Dark didn’t realize what he was asking until it came out.

“Yeah,” Anti answered, looking away and awkwardly shifting on his feet. 

“What did you want to ask.” Dark looked at his own feet. 

“Um…” Anti made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Is there something wrong with Google’s arm? Why did he panic so much over Blank touching it?” 

“That’s not for me to say.” Dark was looking at Mad, Bing and google again. 

“Why not?” 

“It’s part of our human code.” Dark chuckled a little. “Certain things are meant for the actual person to tell and Google’s arm is something I don’t talk about with others without his permission.” 

“Oh.” Anti held out the word. “Okay.” Anti was clearly pouting about not being able to know but he wasn’t going to push it anymore or at least he wasn’t going to ask Dark. “Mare doesn’t hate Google, in case he asks later.” 

“That’s good to know,” Dark said. 

“Blank’s a smart pup and gets that Google was just scared.” Anti was just trying to find anything to talk about. “Robbie’s a smart pup too.” Dark didn’t respond due to not really knowing what to say. “CJ and RJ seem to be really smart as well.” 

“They are.” Dark popped his lips when there was a pause. “I’m...I’m going to go see if they’re almost ready to go.” Dark awkwardly gestured with a thumb.

“Cool.” Anti rocked on his feet and went back to the others as Dark went to the trio.

“Using binary Morse-code, you can send messages to anyone else with the same kind of system.” Mad was practically bouncing as he explained.

“How many others have this system?” Google asked. 

“Are we going to get messages from random ships?” Bing added. 

“Well...uh...no.” Mad weakly chuckled. “I’m the only other person with one since I created them.” 

“You made a new form of guidance system!” Google exclaimed. “On your own!?” 

“That’s incredible!” Bing half-shouted.

“Y-Yeah.” Mad chewed on the inside of his cheek, the rest of his face flushing a little. 

“Will we be ready to sail off soon?” Dark asked.

“Yes, yes!” Mad handed Google the guidance system and Bing some paper. “Those are notes of how it works in case you forget and if I hear that you sold my system.” Mad’s mood suddenly changed as he looked Bing right in the eyes. “I will hunt you down.”

“There’s no way we’re sharing this.” Bing flashed a smile and that got Mad to physically relax. 

“If this ends up malfunctioning, do we need to come back here or will we be able to find parts at a market?” Google asked. 

“You can try, but it’d be better to come back.” Mad chuckled before looking at Google. “If you have to come back, don’t threaten my Sirens.” Mad stiffened at his phrasing before sputtering out. “Th-They are here a lot and it’ll be hard if they don’t like you.” 

“Anti says that Mare has forgiven him,” Dark said. “Or that he at least doesn’t hate him.” 

“The last thing I need is for a Siren to hate me.” Google sighed. 

“If we have everything, go gather the others and get ready to head back to the ship.” 

“Yes, Captain.” Google and Bing said before heading off. Dark waited until he was sure they were out of earshot before speaking.

“What kind of payment would you like for your work?” Dark asked.

“I don’t need any.” Mad shrugged. “Being able to properly test my guidance system’s communication feature is good enough.” 

“Is there any way I could convince you to join my crew?” Dark watched Mad shake his head and chuckle.

“My sailing days are long gone. I like where I am.” Mad looked over Dark’s shoulder and Dark didn’t have to look himself to know what or who he was looking at. “I’m happy here.” 

“Let me know if you change your mind.” Dark held out a hand. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mad.” Mad took the offered hand and shook it with a laugh.

“Pleasure meeting you too, Dark.” 


	13. Hunters

“It sounds like Google and Bing are loving the new guidance system,” Wilford said as he joined Dark on the upper deck. “They’ve been messing with it all day.” 

“Hopefully it doesn’t break on them from doing that.” Dark watched as CJ and RJ were working on the nets, Edward was sitting nearby writing into his journal of notes and Yandere and Bim were doing some sweeping. The waters had been calm for them since they’ve left Mad’s island. 

“At least we know where to go if it does.” Wilford chuckled. 

“I’m still trying to process why Mad wants to live alone like that,” Dark said. “I’ll admit to not being the most sociable but to never have anyone around.” 

“Mad’s not alone.” Wilford corrected. “He’s got Mare, Phantom, and Blank to keep him company and plenty busy by the sounds of it.” 

“They’re Sirens.” Dark protested

“Really?” Wilford scoffed. 

“They eat people.”

“We’ve killed people too.” Wilford made Dark turn to face him. “They are not the only ones with blood on their hands and you know this. None of us are innocent.” 

“I don’t mean that, I-” 

“Look at them.” Wilford moved Dark again and pointed out into the water. The Sirens were all happily swimming around next to the ship, playing what appeared to be a strange game of tag. Henrik and JJ were swimming away from Chase and Marvin and then Anti and Robbie suddenly came out of the water, Robbie holding to Anti’s back and they grabbed Marvin and pulled him into the water. “They are a lot like us. They just have tails.” Wilford had Dark face him once more. “They’re not going to leave, even after we get the gold. I don’t want JJ to go, Edward doesn’t want Henrik to go and you don’t want Anti to go.” 

“I do not have feelings for him.” Dark turned away and grunted when Wilford caught his wrist. 

“Are you running from him because he’s a Siren or because of the past?” Wilford let go when Dark yanked his arm away. 

“That has nothing to do with it,” Dark muttered. 

“Does it? I can list a good handful of things that happened to us that would make me think otherwise.” 

“Why are you pushing this?” 

“Because I want you to be happy, damn it!” Wilford finally snapped. “I don’t want you to keep running from good things because you think you don’t deserve it. You do! You deserve to be happy and loved!”

“Just fuck JJ and get it over with already!” Dark snapped back, not expecting For Wilford to slap him across the face. The ship went silent and Dark assumed it was because of the slap but when he looked at Wilford, he saw something in the distance that made him forget everything. Wilford turned and saw it as well, he saw the ship, he saw the Hunters. 

“Go under the ship!” Chase ordered, swimming to a bawling Robbie. 

Dark’s eyes went wide as he heard the Siren’s cry. The sound echoing inside of his mind and everything started to blur. He felt like he was falling while standing. He was falling...falling…

_ falling… _

_ x~x~x _

Dark, who had just turned thirteen was holding onto the rope with Wilford, struggling to keep it down and make sure the Siren they had trapped in the water doesn’t get away. 

“No! No, please!” A different Siren, a grown female, was screaming as she was trapped on the ship. “Don’t hurt him, please!” She begged at the Captain of the ship. 

“Keep her down.” The Captain, Mark, ordered. He looked at the crying baby Siren in his hand, holding them upside down by their tail. The baby had the same purple tail as their mother. 

“I won’t fight! I promise! Just let him go! Don’t hurt my pups!” The Siren pleaded, clawing at the deck as tears rolled down her cheeks. 

“Don’t damage my ship!” Mark snapped and kicked the Siren. Dark looked away as the Siren cried out in pain and he saw Wilford’s body tense up, anger in his eyes. 

“I thought we were Pirates.” Wilford almost growled. “Not those disgusting Hunters.” 

“Don’t let them hear you.” Dark was shaking as he heard more screams from the Siren and he could feel the rope being pulled on. 

“Mama! Mama!” The Siren in the net was crying as well. They had to be just a little younger than Dark and Wilford were. “Mama!” 

The baby Siren kept crying and crying and crying. It rang in Dark’s heads, echoed in his ears, and twisted at his stomach that made him feel like he was going to be sick. 

“Shit!” Dark cursed when the rope was now much harder to hold and it slipped from his grip, pulling him down and slamming his chin against the deck. 

“Swim! Swim away!” The Siren told the now freed Siren in the water. “Go! Go!” The young Siren looked at his mother before taking off, disappearing into the deep water in a blink. 

“What was that!?” Mark demanded, heading over to Dark and Wilford. 

“It slipped,” Wilford said in the flat voice, staring Mark right in the eyes. Mark gritted his teeth before cuffing Wilford in the head with his free hand, almost knocking Wilford over. 

“I will beat the disrespect out of you before the year is through.” Mark spat before dropping a gun in front of Dark and pointing at the grown Siren with the still crying baby. “Kill her.” 

“I-I…” Dark stayed on the ground and could only stutter. He didn’t sign up for this. He wanted to learn how to sail from the youngest Captain in history...he didn’t want this. 

“Gah!” Dark gasped out when Mark kicked him in the stomach. 

“And I’ll beat some courage into you.” Mark scoffed and took out a blade, slicing into the baby before throwing them into the water. 

“My pup! My-” The Siren didn’t get to mourn for long before Mark shot her between the eyes. 

“Clean this mess up,” Mark said and walked off. 

“Dark…” Wilford turned Dark to his back and held Dark’s face so he would look at him. Hey, Dark..Dark…”

Dark…

_ Dark... _


	14. Who We Were

“Dark?” 

Dark gasp in a painful breathe of air, suddenly overly aware of everything around him. He could feel his hands trembling, legs aching and he was staring at Wilford, who was looking back at him. Dark was back, but he wasn’t fully functional on his own yet. 

“Should I get anything?” Edward asked. 

“I got him. Check on the others.” Wilford showed Dark his hand before placing it on his shoulder, guiding him to walk into the living quarters. Wilford got Dark into the Captain quarters and made him lay down on his bed. Dark stared up at the ceiling while Wilford got a cup and filled it with water. Wilford went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, holding the cup and waiting. 

“Wil?” Dark croaked out. 

“There he is.” Wilford handed Dark the cup of water and helped him sit up a little. 

“How long was I gone?” Dark asked, staring at the water. 

“Only a minute.” Wilford placed his hand on the bottom of the cup and tilted it towards Dark’s mouth, telling him that he had to drink. Dark took several large gulps, downing the whole cup. Dark coughed a little when he was done and gave the cup back to Wilford. There was a painfully awkward silence as Wilford returned the cup where he had gotten it. 

“Wil...I didn’t mean it like that.” Dark said softly. “When I talked about you and JJ.”

“No, you meant it how you meant it.” Wilford shrugged as he turned to face Dark. “I don’t blame you.” 

“I shouldn’t have meant it like that.” Dark sighed and rubbed his face. 

“The past is the past but it still affects us.” Wilford leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, staring off at nothing. “None of it was a lie, though.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” 

There was another pause. 

“Wil…” Dark moved so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m just...I’m just worried about you getting hurt again, like that.” Dark used his fingers to trace the scars on his arms. “JJ’s one of them and-”

“JJ’s different and so are the others out there.” Wilford looked at Dark. “They’re not going to hurt us. Physically or otherwise.” Wilford saw that Dark was doing everything he could to not look at him. 

“Could you stop bringing up what that ‘otherwise’ is?” Dark groaned. 

“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I want you to be happy, you deserve to be happy and I can see that you like Anti, everyone can see that you like Anti, well, almost everyone and you’re being a stubborn fool about this.”

“We’ve only known them for a little more than two weeks.” Dark stood up and went over to the mirror, fixing his clothing and his hair. 

“Crushes can happen in a day,” Wilford said. 

“And a heart can break in a day,” Dark said back. Wilford was going to respond but there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Dark called and grabbed his comb. 

“It’s Edward,” Edward said as he stepped in, closing the door behind him. “Everyone is okay, the Sirens are all under the ship and Google said that it…” Edward cleared his throat. “It wasn’t them.” 

“Good, I’m not in the mood to deal with  _ him _ .” Dark spat the last word and practically tossed his comb back where it belonged. 

“Are you okay, Dark?” Edward was hesitant to keep talking but he pushed through. “It’s been a while since your last...episode. There’s been a drastic change in your life and it may be bringing up-”

“I’m fine. A minor set back, that is all.” Dark stated and stepped away from the mirror and to his desk. “Ask Google if we’re still on course to be at our usual port in a few days. I want an exact number if he can give it.” 

“Are you-” Edward stopped himself when Dark gave him a hard look. “Yes, Captain.” Edward slipped back out of the room. 

“Did you have to make our Medic shit his pants?” Wilford asked with a chuckle, going to Dark’s desk and sitting on the corner of it. “He was just doing his job.” 

“His job is to heal injuries, I’m fine.” Dark sat in his chair and started organizing his papers.

“Would you be saying I was fine if it happened to me?” Wilford’s question got Dark to go still in thought. “Your standards are too high about yourself.” 

“What do you want me to say?” Dark placed his hands flat on the desk and finally looked at Wilford. 

“The truth.”

“I am telling the truth.” 

“Are you refusing to even think about being with Anti because of me?” 

“I-” Dark turned away again. That question hurt. He hated that question. Why did Wilford have to bring that up? “That was years ago. We’ve moved on.” Dark tried to keep his voice even. 

“Have we?” Wilford placed his hand on top of Dark’s. “I’ll admit to sometimes thinking of how we used to be. Before we got this ship and crew. When it was just the two of us after our time with…” Wilford scoffed and shook his head. “I still can’t say his name most times.” 

“It just wasn’t meant to be,” Dark said. He looked at his hand and moved his fingers under Wilford’s, watching as all of it moved. 

“It wasn’t.” Wilford shrugged. “But I’m thankful you’re still in my life.” Wilford followed the same pattern with his fingers that Dark was playing with his own. “I have many regrets in my life but the people who I’ve welcomed into my heart are not one of them. While the others were more of a fling, I’ll admit that my feelings for JJ remind me a lot of how I first felt about you all those years ago.” Wilford squeezed his hand, holding Dark’s now. “I loved you, Dark. I truly did. While that love has changed into a new form, it’s still there.” 

“I loved you too, Wilford,” Dark said softly. 

“You were very vocal about that, especially in the bedroom.” Wilford winked and Dark rolled his eyes, taking his hand back. 

“You’ve ruined the mood,” Dark said with a laugh, not even trying to keep his tone serious. 

“You know I’m a good lay. Not many can top me.” Wilford blew on his fingernails and rubbed them against his chest. There was a soft pause before Wilford sighed and placed a hand on Dark’s shoulder, giving it a little rub. “I’m not telling you to rush into anything, I just don’t want you to be afraid.” 


	15. Home Visit

“We’re here!” Bing happily cheered from his post. 

“Here? What’s here?” Henrik asked when he saw the humans a lot more...peppy. 

“Home.” Edward chuckled before taking off to help dock the ship. 

“Home?” That got all of the Sirens to perk up. They all waited, standing on their legs as the humans got docked and gathered some supplies. The Sirens clearly wanted to join but weren’t going to go without permission. This was the human’s home. They couldn’t intrude. 

“Here are some pants and shirts.” Yandere and Bim started passing out spare clothing to the Sirens. 

“You can use the scarf to cover whatever the shirts and pants don’t,” Bim said. 

“Why are you giving us these?” Chase asked as he slipped on a button-up shirt, fingers fumbling with the buttons. 

“Because we know you’re going to go on land again like last time,” Dark said while Bim helped Chase with his shirt. “And we’d prefer that there isn’t a scene.” 

“It’s your home space, we can’t go without permission,” Anti said as he stepped into a pair of pants. 

“But we went to Mad’s island without him knowing,” Google said. 

“Phantom, Mare, and Blank gave us permission to go on the land,” Marvin said, helping Robbie with the clothing. “But Mad’s home space is the ship he lives in, we’re not allowed in there unless Mad says so.” 

“That’s why you always ask if you can come aboard,” Edward said. 

“I thought it was vampires that had to have permission.” Bing chuckled. 

“So if I said that you’re not allowed on this part of the land, you wouldn’t go on it?” Dark asked.

“If it’s your home space, yes.” Anti nodded his head. 

“What if two or more people own the same ‘home space’?” Google asked. “Would it have to be a unanimous vote or are you able to ignore one in favor of the other or-” 

“You’re looking to deep into this, Googs.” Bing cut Google off with a giggle. 

“You’re allowed on the land, but you can’t enter any of the buildings without one of us saying you can.” Dark stated, figuring that would work best and little to no protest from his crew. 

“Okay!” The Sirens all shouted before taking off. 

“Wait!” Bim called out as he, Yandere, and Edward went after them. 

“I’m going to assume you’re headed for your normal places,” Google said while Bing was bouncing a little with impatience. 

“Yes, be sure to let them know we’re only staying for the day. We’ll come back fo longer after we get the gold.” Dark said. 

“On it!” Bing gabbed Google’s arm and ran off with him in tow. 

“CJ, RJ, you two ready?” Dark saw that the twins were trying their best to stay calm but were rocking back and forth on their feet. “Let’s go.” 

Dark and Wilford stepped off of the ship together with CJ and RJ behind them. Dark knew they were there so they wouldn’t take off ahead of them. Dark found himself looking around, trying to see if he could find where his crew and the Sirens had gone. It was a small town, they couldn’t have gotten far. Dark turned his head when his body unconsciously stopped and he heard knocking. 

“You think we should invite them to come see our duo?” Wilford gestured towards where Anti and JJ were, both of them were looking at something Bim and Yandere were showing, most likely some jewelry since a kind elderly woman named Ms. Applegate was with them as well. No one was really sure what Ms. Applegate’s real name was, but no one questioned it either since she made beautiful jewelry and sold it for little coin. 

“No...not yet at least,” Dark said with a head shake. Wilford nodded and knocked on the door again when no one answered it.

“Honey, I’m home~” Wilford sang and stepped into the house, Dark, CJ, and RJ following. 

“Sorry, I was coming.” A man said with a laugh, walking into the room with the help of his cane. 

“Damien, how have you been!?” Wilford loudly greeted and went over to Damien, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “I have some fascinating news for you and your dear sister.”

“Should I go prepare some drinks?” Damien chuckled. “It sounds like you’ve been up to a lot since the last time we’ve seen you.” 

“That’s an understatement,” Dark scoffed. 

“Is that Dark’s famous pouting I’m hearing?” A woman asked as she came into the room as well, a wet towel draped across her arm.

“I don’t pout,” Dark said. 

“You pout.” Wilford, Damien, and the woman said in unison. 

“Mom!” CJ and RJ squealed and pushed past Dark, hugging the woman. 

“How have you two gotten so much bigger?” The woman giggled, hugging the twins back.

“You should see them eat.” Wilford patted his own stomach. “Puts me to shame.” 

“Do you mind putting this away for me?” The woman handed the towel to RJ. RJ and CJ both nodded and took off into the house. “Sorry I didn’t answer the door, I was taking a bath and had to put some clothes on.”

“Nothing we haven’t seen before, Celine” Wilford winked. 

“But Dark hasn’t and I want to keep that for a real surprise.” Celine laughed.

“You can keep that surprise. I don’t want to see it.” Dark held a hand up but had a smile on his lips. 

“Oh, would you rather see Damien then?” Celine suggested with a little shimmy. 

“I’d rather gouge out my own eyes.” Dark exaggerated his voice.

“I’m sorry bout have you seen Damien’s ass?” Wilford cupped his hands as if he was holding what he was talking about. “It’s just the perfect perky thing to-”

“Alright, alright, we get it.” Damien used his cane to lower Wilford’s hands. 

“I wasn’t expecting you back so soon, did you change your course?” Celine asked. 

“There’s been a little...change in plans.” Dark chewed on his lip. 

“I’m seducing a Siren,” Wilford puffed out his chest. 

“You fucked a fish!?” Damien exclaimed.

“He didn’t fuck a fish.” Dark sighed.

“He wants to fuck a fish,” Celine said.

“I want to fuck a fish,” Wilford added.

“I need a drink.” Damien threw a hand up and left the room.


	16. My Family

“So you caught a Siren, agreed to follow an entire group of them and two members of your crew have fallen in love with Sirens?” Celine asked.

“That’s one way to put it.” Dark sighed, pressing his forehead against the cold glass of his wine. Wilford and Damien were talking at the other side of the room while CJ and RJ had gone to town to visit a few friends, knowing when they were to get back.

“And you’re falling for one?” Celine laughed when Dark only groaned and tried to hide his face with his drink. “Let’s get some more wine in ya and then you’ll talk. But first-” Celine patted Dark’s knee before she stood up and called out. “Wilford, let’s meet your Siren.” 

“Absolutely!” Wilford went straight for the door and threw it open, leaving without waiting for anyone else. 

“When that man falls, he falls hard.” Damien chuckled. 

“He does.” Celine and Dark agreed. 

“We should have a group name.” Damien retrieved his cane that was leaning against the wall. 

“A group name?” Dark asked. 

“Yeah, like; ‘Wilford’s Lovers’ or something.” Damien started walking and stopped when Dark and Celine both broke out in loud laughter. 

“Absolutely not.” Celine looped her arm through Damien’s. “I don’t want that kind of a name with my brother.” 

“How much have you and Wilford already drank?” Dark teased from the other side of Damien. 

“Only a few.” Damien giggled. 

“A few mixed or a few straight?” Celine asked. 

“When is anything straight in this house?” Damien couldn’t keep an even face with that and the three of them were all laughing as they left the house.

“I’m gone for what, a minute, and you’re all having fun without me?” Wilford asked, having already gathered Anti and JJ. 

“These are the Sirens?” Celine asked, passing by Wilford and stepping up to Anti. “They look almost human.” 

“Magic,” Anti said. “We’re using magic to have legs.” JJ nodded in agreement as Anti spoke. 

“The markings are a dead giveaway though.” Damien chuckled. 

“We just say it’s paint.” Anti shrugged. “Only Hunters would...yeah.” 

“I get it.” Celine flashed a friendly smile and turned towards Wilford. “So, are we getting introductions?” 

“Ah! Yes, yes.” Wilford wrapped an arm around JJ’s shoulders and JJ went stiff, cheeks flushing a slight pink. “This right here is JJ, the best Siren of the group.” JJ slapped at Wilford’s chest while using the other hand to sign. 

“He’s telling him to shut up.” Anti translated. 

“You must be Anti then,” Celine said. 

“The one and only.” Anti giggled. 

“I get it.” Celine nudged Dark’s arm with an elbow. 

“You get nothing.” Dark huffed while Anti raised a brow. 

“I’m Damien.” Damian held a hand out towards Anti took it with both of his hands and shook them. “Close enough.” Damien chuckled. “And I have many questions for you.” He added to JJ, who went stiff. “I want to know all about your communication style.” That got JJ to relax and smile. 

“Come in, come in.” Celine gestured towards the house. “I want to hear  _ everything _ .” She said with a giggle. JJ and Anti both looked at Dark. 

“It’s her house.” Dark sighed and watched the two perk up and rush in. 

“Can’t enter a home space without permission,” Wilford explained.

“How interesting.” Damien hummed as he, Dark, Wilford, and Celine went right back into the house.

x~x~x

“We should probably find the others and head back to the sea,” Anti said as he and JJ stood, their cups of offered wine left untouched. Several hours had passed at that point. CJ and RJ had returned and both fell asleep almost as soon as they sat down. 

“That’s our cue to head back to the ship then.” Dark went to stand, wobbled, and was pulled back down on the couch by Celine. 

“You’re drunk,” Celine stated.

“I’m not drunk.” Dark rolled his eyes.

“Tipsy.” Wilford and Damien both corrected. 

“And tipsy Dark can’t be on a ship.” Celine giggled a little. 

“Drunk Dark can.” Wilford laughed. “Drunk Dark is hilarious on a ship.” 

“I said we’re not spending the night and we’re not-”

“Are you really going to wake the boys just to take them away from their mother so soon?” Celine asked and Anti saw the shift in Dark’s face as he looked at CJ and RJ. “Let them sleep in their beds tonight, let me wake them and give them a proper goodbye.” 

“Okay,” Dark said softly. “We’ll stay the night.” 

“Thank you,” Celine said with a smile. 

“Let’s get the buggers up to bed and let the crew know the change of plan,” Wilford grunted as he stood. 

“We can do that,” Anti said. “We’re going to see them as we find our pod.” 

“We’ll see your beautiful faces in the morning then.” Wilford winked. 

“Good night.” Anti made eye contact with Dark and Dark flashed an awkward smile before looking away. JJ waved at Wilford as he and Anti left the house. 

“Are we leaving?” RJ’s voice was hoarse. 

“We’re spending the night, bud.” Wilford walked over and crouched down, picking up the still sleeping CJ. 

“Good.” RJ followed Wilford out of the room. 

“I’ll tidy up a bit and you and Dark can get the extra blankets and pillows,” Damien said. 

“Yes, sir.” Celine did a mock salute and she and Dark left the room as well. 

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to help him?” Dark asked when they were out of hearing range. 

“You can’t argue with pride, Dark.” Celine opened the door to her bedroom and walked in. 

“You’re right.” Dark sighed. 

“Cheer up.” Celine reached into a closet and tossed a pillow at Dark. “You’re home for the night, relax.” 

“I’m not sure if ‘home’ is the right word.” Dark watched the pile of blankets and pillows grow on the bed. 

“Home is whatever and wherever or even whoever you want it to be,” Celine went to the bed and jumped on top of the pile. “Lay down with me.” Dark just shook his head with a small smile and plopped down next to Celine. “Tell me, how’s it been and you know what I’m talking about.” 

“We saw Hunters,” Dark said bluntly. “It wasn’t him.” He quickly added.

“Good, the boys don’t need that in their lives.” 

“The youngest of the Sirens, Robbie, I’m pretty sure I watched his mother be killed.” 

“How do you know that?” Celine turned her head and saw Dark’s face. “An episode, wasn’t it?” 

“Yeah.” Dark chewed on his lip. Celine gestured with her hand and Dark knew what that meant. He rolled over to his side and curled up against Celine’s. Celine ran a hand through Dark’s hair. 

“He’s a bastard.” 

“You’re right.” There was a pause as Celine continued to play with Dark’s hair. “Should I tell the Sirens?” 

“About seeing the death of a mother?” 

“Do they need to know?” 

“I’m sure they’re well aware. They’re Sirens, they know how Hunters are.” 

“I said get the blankets and pillows, not make a nest of sorts,” Damien said as he came into the room. “Wait.” Damien recognized the position. “Is everything okay?” 

“Hunters,” Celine answered. 

“Was it-”

“No.”

“Thank, God.” Damien sighed and went over to the bed as well, laying himself down on the other side of Celine, adjusting so he was on his back with his hip at a comfortable angle. “I like being in ignorance of thinking that he’ll never be in our lives again.” 

“Ignorance is bliss.” Celine sighed. 

“You’re having a cuddle pile without me?” Wilford was at the door now, a hand on his chest. “Make room for the master.” Wilford chuckled and crawled up on the bed. “Watching the hip, watching the hair,” Wilford spoke as he nuzzled himself between Damien and Celine, Dark sitting up and moving away. “Here we go.” Wilford wrapped one arm around Celine and the other around Damien. “Come on, Darky, you know where your favorite spot is.” Wilford chuckled as Dark glared at him for a moment before rolling his eyes and laying himself on top of Wilford’s chest. “Perfect.” 

“You are definitely something, Wilford,” Celine said as she pulled out a few loose blankets. 

“I’m loved, that’s what I am.” Wilford hummed as Celine covered Dark with one of the blankets. 

“You’re a pain in the ass.” Damien caught the blanket Celine tossed over to him. 

“I’m that as well.” Wilford’s agreement got all four of them to laugh. 

“At least he admits it.” Dark lightly tapped Wilford’s chest as Celine and Damien got comfortable under blankets as well. 

“What do you think the others got up to?” Wilford suddenly asked. 

“We’ll ask in the morning.” Dark already had his eyes closed. 

“Aw, is someone all tuckered out?” Wilford teased. 

“Wil. I am literally inches away from being able to hurt you very badly with my knee.” Dark warned. 

“I’ve had worse.” Wilford shrugged. 

“Go to sleep.” 

“Yes, sir.”


	17. Meanwhile

“These are amazing,” Anti said as he looked at the jewelry in awe. The silver parts were polished, the gems were reflective, everything about it all was just...beautiful. 

“Thank you, dear.” The woman, Ms. Applegate, said with a smile. “I also make unique pieces for those who ask.” 

“She made the one Dark wears.” Yandere said. 

“You made that for him?” Anti perked up. 

“Well, it was actually for his mother...but that’s a different story.” Ms. Applegate waved her hand.

“Wait, what-” Anti stopped when Ms. Applegate waved her hand again, and when he looked at Bim and Yandere they were forcing themselves to focus on some rings, clearly wanting to avoid the topic.

“Here, sweety.” Ms. Applegate handed JJ a freshly polished chain he had been staring at. “This would be a good gift for courting, no?” That comment got JJ’s face to flush and Anti to tilt his head. “I know those little marks aren’t paint, I’ve been around too long and too much to be that naïve.” 

“Uh...thank you.” Anti scratched at his neck.

“Do you need anything?” Ms. Applegate asked with a smirk.

“Oh! No, no, no!” Anti shook both hands and he glanced at JJ, who was nodding. “No, I don’t!” 

“Is that teasing I hear?” Chase asked with a chuckle as he, Marvin, Robbie, Google, and Bing joined the four. Anti just crossed his arms in a pout.

“Here for your usual, Google?” Ms. Applegate asked. 

“Yes.” Google hands Ms. Applegate a coin and she reached under her little stand and pulled out a simple ring. “Let her know I say hello.”

“I always do.” Google gave Ms. Applegate a smile. “Bing and I are going to head off to see my mother.” 

“Oh, we should probably see our families too,” Bim said.

“Yeah…” Yandere’s mood suddenly went down. 

“Do you want Me and Marv to join you?” Chase asked, knowing that shift. 

“You don’t have-”

“Too late, we already are,” Marvin said. “Robbie, want to come with us?”

“I wanna see a mom.” Robbie grabbed Google’s sleeve. Google stiffened for a second and took a quick deep breath to calm himself. 

“Is that okay with you?” Marvin asked.

“We can handle the kiddo,” Bing said with a chuckle. 

“We’re off then,” Bim said. 

“Anti! JJ!” Wilford was suddenly shouting from outside a nearby house. 

“Looks like we’re all set up for a while,” Chase said, seeing that Henrik was walking with Edward. “If you give Robbie a big drink of water, he’ll be able to last till sun-down.” He said to Google. 

“Okay,” Google said. 

“Be good for them,” Marvin said to Robbie. 

“Okay!” Robbie giggled. 

“And we’re off,” Bing said.

x~x~x

Robbie kept a hold on Google’s sleeve the whole walk to the house. Bing looked around to make sure none of the other crew were able to see them before taking Google’s other hand into his own. 

“I hope she’s doing better than last time,” Bing said. 

“If she’s not I’ll use my part of the treasure to pay for a house helper,” Google said. “The other women are only willing to do so much without any pay.” 

“You’d think they’d do it out of the kindness of their hearts after all your mother has done for them.” 

“Kindness doesn’t put food on the table.” 

“Is mom sick?” Robbie asked. 

“It’s...complicated,” Google said. 

“Complicated,” Robbie repeated. 

“Here we are.” Google stopped in front of a small houses’ door. “Be calm and don’t ask too many questions.” He added to Robbie and waited until Robbie eagerly nodded his head before opening the door. “Ma? Ma, it’s me.” 

“Google? Is that you?” A weak-sounding voice called as the three walked in. 

“Yes, Ma and I have Bing and someone else with me.”

“Bing’s here? Oh, he’s such a sweet boy.” A very elderly woman made her way into the room, slowly heading up to Robbie. “And who’s this little fellow? Did you two finally get a kid? Certainly a silly one. He’s all dirty.” The woman licked her thumb and tried to clean off one of the markings on Robbie’s face. 

“He’s not ours.” Google took his mother’s arm and walked with her, getting her attention away from Robbie’s marks. “We’re babysitting.” 

“Oh? Do I know the parents?” Google’s mother asked, allowing Google to guide her to a chair that was covered in many layers of blankets and pillows. 

“No, we meet them out at sea.” Google waited until his mother was fully sat before sitting himself down near her. 

Bing looked down when Robbie was now tugging on his sleeve. Robbie gestured for Bing to bend towards him.

“Google’s mom?” Robbie asked in a whisper, pointing at the woman.

“Yes,” Bing answered in a whisper as well. 

“Name?” 

“Her name is Cortana.” 

“Cool.” Robbie went back to watching the two and Bing gave him a pat on the head before going over to Google and Cortana. 

“Now, the last time I was here, you said there was a book you wanted to talk to me about,” Bing said to Cortana. 

“Did I?” Cortana looked out at nothing. “I haven’t read a book in a long time.” 

“It has been a good while since we’ve been here. I can go get your books and see if one of them sparks-”

“Shit.” Google suddenly cursed after sniffing and took off. “Shit!” He cursed louder just a second after he was gone. 

“I’ll be back,” Bing said and followed Google. “Well, shit.” Bing found himself agreeing when he was slapped with a strong smell of burning and Google was at the sink, steam hovering in the air as he rinsed out an almost charred pan. Bing went to the gas stove and turned it off. 

“It had to have been sitting there for hours to get this bad.” Google said, dropping the pan with a loud ‘clunk’. 

“The bread’s been bad for a long time.” Bing featured towards what was now just a lump of mold. 

“She’s gotten worse.” Google’s shoulders slumped. “She’s an intelligent woman. She’s the smartest woman I have ever known and now…”

“She’s still smart.” Bing went over to Google, wrapping an arm around him. “She’s just a little forgetful.” 

“This isn’t forgetful, this is dangerous.” Google blinked and Bing could see the tears forming. “What if we were here, Bing? What if Dark hadn’t let us come home early? What if we...she could have...oh, God.” 

“Googs.” Bing slipped himself between Google and the sink and placed his hands on Google’s chest. “Don’t think of those things, we’re here and that’s what matters.” 

“She can’t be alone anymore, I don’t have enough to pay for a live-in but she can’t last until we get the gold. I can’t let her get hurt, I can’t.” 

“I have some extra funds…” Bing moved his arms so that he was rubbing Google’s shoulders, thumbs making circles on his collar bones. 

“What?” 

“I’ve been saving up for quite a while, I was going to get you some upgrades but we can use it for her.” 

“Bing, I can’t ask you-”

“She’s your mom and, if you’ll let me, she’s like my mom too.” 

“I love you, Bing. I love you so much. You’re the best thing to have ever happened to me.” Google pulled Bing in for a tight hug. 

“I love you too, Googs.” Bing hugged back. 

“Cortana like the ring.” Robbie’s voice suddenly spoke and Google and Bing turned towards the entrance to the kitchen, seeing Robbie standing there. 

“Excuse?” Google asked.

“The ring you got, Cortana like it,” Robbie said. 

“The…” Google patted his pocket and found that the ring was in fact not there. “How?” 

“Slippery fingers,” Bing said with a little laugh in his voice 

“You look happy with mom, happy mom make happy you,” Robbie explained. 

“Oh…” Google wasn’t sure what to say or even think.

“We should find one of the others soon to let them know about the job,” Bing said, starting to move away from Google. 

“Wait, first I need to-” Google stopped himself to give Bing a kiss. 

“Was that a thank you?” Bing asked with a grin. 

“That was only the first part, I’ll give you the rest of my thanks later.” Google winked. 

“I look forward to it~” Bing giggled. “I…” Bing let his voice trail off when he saw that Robbie was still there, patiently waiting. “Let’s go talk with Cortana while Google steps out for a little bit, Robbie. She has a lot of fun stories.” 

“Stories!?” Robbie squealed and was easily guided out of the room by Bing, who quickly blew Google a kiss before they were out of the room. 


	18. Meanwhile Again

“You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to,” Edward said to Henrik, Edward’s hand on the handle to the door of a fairly large house. 

“I’m curious about how Humans interact with their blood-pod,” Henrik said. “I’m assuming there’s most likely a difference with how you act around them compared to the pod on the ship.” 

“Just a little.” Edward chuckled. “Now, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” 

“Warn me of what?” Henrik was soon answered when Edward opened the door and there was a flood of children waiting for them. “So many pups,” Henrik said softly and was guided through the crowd. 

“He home! He home!” Most of them chanted as a much smaller flood of adults came into the room, packing it tightly with people. 

“I didn’t expect you home, Edward.” An elderly woman said as she came up to him. “And you’ve brought a guest too? I would have made my special stew if I had known.” 

“I’m sorry, Mama, this was unexpected for me too.” Edward gave the woman a quick peck on the cheek. “This is Henrik, he’s a...friend.” 

“Hello.” Henrik awkwardly greeted.

“A friend? That is all?” Mama pouted a little. 

“Yes, Mama, just a friend.” Edward just got the sentence out before one of the kids grabbed his hand and dragged him away.

“Just a friend?” Mama repeated to Henrik. 

“Y-Yeah. Just friends...uh…”

“Call me Mama, everyone here does.” Mama gave Henrik a quick look-over. “You would not lie to Mama, right?” 

“No, Mama.” Henrik stiffened when something grabbed his hand and he saw that a different child, a little girl, had him and was taking him away as well. 

“Look, look, my finger red.” One of the little boys was showing Edward the said finger. 

“Now, how did you do that?” Edward asked. 

“I press it against table really hard.” The boy said. “Is it broke?” 

“Let’s see.” Edward took the hand and moved it around to ‘examine’ it, letting out little hums that got all the children to giggle. “Nope. Looks fine to me.”

“It not broke!” The boy announced, the children cheering at that. 

“Go show Mama the not broke finger,” Edward said. 

“Okay!” The boy giggled and he, along with the majority of the children, took off to Mama. 

“You’re good with pups,” Henrik commented. 

“They’re my nieces and nephews, I’m just ‘fun doctor, uncle, Eddy’.”

“Eddy? That’s a cute nickname.” Henrik said with a little laugh.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Edward said.

“I would never dream of it, Eddy.” 

x~x~x

“They’re not expecting you, you don’t have to see them,” Bim said to Yandere. Chase and Marvin just shared a look of confusion. 

“If they find out I was here and didn’t see them, it’ll be worse than not.” Yandere sighed. “Let’s just get this over with and then see your mom.” Yandere knocked on the door in front of them and a large man opened it, rolling his eyes when he saw Yandere. 

“Come in.” The man said, no longer looking at any of them as he turned and went into the house. 

“Brother?” Chase asked in a whisper as he and Marvin followed Bim and Yandere. 

“I don’t think so,” Marvin whispered back. “I think that’s her father.” 

“You finally visit us and it’s outside of the usual routine?” A woman huffed as she came in from the kitchen, knife in hand. “I don’t have enough food made, let alone enough to feed your little friends too.” 

“I don’t like her,” Marvin said softly to Chase.

“That has to be the mother.” Chase saw how Yandere slumped when the woman spoke. 

“It’s fine, we’re not hungry,” Bim said. “We just wanted to see how everyone’s been since the last-”

“Do you really care or are you just trying to keep appearance?” The man interrupted. “Because you gave up on that a long time ago when our only child decided to abandon us, our values, and our business.” 

“I don’t want to be a merchant, father. I’m happy being who I am.” Yandere was clearly struggling to hold back.

“Nice to know that you can’t be happy with us, your family.” The woman said. 

“Can we please not do this?” Yandere asked. “I came here to see you, mother, not bicker over my choices.” 

“We’ve already done so much for you and all you ever do is ask for more and more and never give us anything back in return.” 

“I give you guys money.” 

“Not enough.” The man spoke harshly. “You have never done enough.” 

“You’re being ridiculous.” Yandere was now getting louder, finally snapping. “I try my best! I do everything that I can! I make more than you and that’s why you’re upset!” 

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” The man rushed for Yandere but Marvin stepped between them. Marvin placed a hand on the man’s throat and shoved him against the wall, teeth and hands going sharp; the claws poking into the man’s neck.

“Don’t speak to your pup like that.” Marvin hissed. “You are her father and you’re acting like she’s causing you harm by just existing.” 

“Marvin, let him go.” Yandere only spoke, clinging to Bim’s arm for support.

“Do you know what it means to be a parent? Pups are to love you, to look up to you, to know that you’d do anything for them and you’re showing that you are  _ nothing _ .” 

“Get off of my husband!” The woman screamed, moving to attack Marvin with the knife but Chase caught her by the wrist. He twisted it and caused the woman to cry out, dropping the knife with a loud clatter.

“Don’t. You. Dare.” Chase growled. 

“Wh-What are you?” The woman whimpered. 

“Real parents.” Chase released the woman and she collapsed to the ground, holding her wrist. 

“I eat cowards like you for breakfast.” Marvin saw the fear in the man’s eyes as he ran his tongue over his lips. “They tend to taste bitter and are a little tough to chew, but we still eat them when we’re hungry.” 

“Marvin...please…” Yandere begged. 

“You’re lucky that your pup is here to protect you.” Marvin took his hand away and stepped back, licking the little bit of blood that was on his claws. 

“Get out! Get out, get out, get out!” The man screamed his demand. “Never come back!” 

“Don’t plan on it.” Marvin spat before turning away and leaving, Chase right behind him. 

“Go! Go!” The man kept screaming and Bim had to practically drag Yandere out of there. The four walked in silence for a bit, Bim now leading them over to a different house. 

“I’m sorry if we went too far.” Marvin went first. “We...we didn’t like that.” 

“It’s fine.” Yandere cleared her throat. “You guys were right about them being nothing. They’re not really my parents, are they?” She weakly laughed at that as tears formed in her eyes. “I just-I just figured I’d try and I keep trying and trying but I can see that it’ll...it’ll never work.” 

“I’m sorry,” Chase said. 

“Let’s just enjoy the rest of the time we have here.” Bim did a rhythmic knock on the door to the new house they were in front of. 

“Are those my favorite troublemakers?” A woman happily greeted when she threw open the door, pulling Yandere and Bim into a hug. “Aw, sweety, why’s my lil’ sugarplum cryin?” 

“It’s my...parents.” Yandere sniffed.

“Oh? Those piles of rotten cabbages? Well, we got plenty of time to talk ‘bout that mess.” The woman used her thumb to wipe away Yandere’s tears. “I made some pasta and there’s always ‘nough to go around.” She added the last part with a look at Chase and Marvin. “I’m expectin a proper greetin when we get in.” 

“Of course!” Chase said as he and Marvin both smiled and perked up.


	19. Foresight

“Go ahead and prepare the ship, I’m going to visit…a friend of ours,” Dark said to Wilford after stepping out of Celine and Damian’s house. 

“I was hoping you’d visit him,” Wilford said with a chuckle. “Alright, boys, let’s get the crew and find our fish.” Wilford laughed as he lead CJ and RJ away. 

“Don’t call them...whatever.” Dark sighed and started walking the other way. “Good morning, Ms. Applegate.” 

“Morning, dear.” Ms. Applegate gave Dark a bright smile. “How have we been?” 

“I’ve been good.” 

“Oh, Dark, you know you can’t lie to me. You’re troubled, I can tell.” Ms. Applegate went up to Dark and placed a hand on the pendent of his necklace. “You’re seeing him today, right?” 

“Yes. I have some questions.” Dark said. “I don’t really believe but-”

“Again with the lying.” Ms. Applegate giggled. “Make sure you do what’s best for you, Dark, don’t let others get in the way.” 

“Maybe I should be paying you instead of him,” Dark said.

“I make jewelry dear, nothing more.” Ms. Applegate gave Dark’s chest a pat before moving away. 

“I’m sure Celine says the same.” Dark hummed before continuing on. 

“Was there a festival or holiday or something yesterday?” Dark overheard a merchant say. 

“Why are you asking?” Another merchant said. 

“There were fellas walkin’ around covered in paint. Little drawings on ‘em.” 

“That’s strange, maybe we missed something.” Dark waited and watched until the two changed the subject and were now discussing prices. Dark was thankful he didn’t have to step in, he didn’t need to waste any more time. Dark went up to a large, tan-colored tent. A teenage girl was sitting at a little homemade desk, perking up when she saw Dark.

“Perfect timing Dark.” The teenager giggled. “He currently doesn’t have clients in there. But I bet you already knew dad would have that planned.” 

“Thank you, Annalise,” Dark said. “I’ll try to be quick.” 

“Quick? Take your time, why does everyone always want to rush things?” Annalise propped her feet up and started filing her nails. “Nothing wrong with being sure.” 

“Not at all.” Dark slipped into the tent. 

“Hello, Dark.” The greeting came from a man with a blindfold over his eyes, and an almost black coat, three-sizes too large, shrouded his body’s form as he sat at a small circular table. 

“Hello, Host.” Dark greeted back. “I assumed you were expecting me?”

“Your energy is strong and it has grown.” Host’s face was towards a crystal ball, hands resting on it and moving ever so slightly as he spoke. 

“It’s grown?” Dark went to the chair on the other side and sat. 

“Grown or changed.” Host said. “Something new is happening in your life and it’s affected you deeply.” 

“It’s causing me annoyance.” Dark adjusted himself so that he was comfortable, slouching even. 

“Then why keep the change? You’re not one to let a burden stay in your life, not after the ones you’ve already had.” 

“Gold.” 

“Gold?” Host repeated with a chuckle. “If that’s the tale you want to tell.” Host lowered his hands from the ball and crossed them on the table. “Do you wish to go through your usual checklist?” 

“Always to the point, but, yes, how’s Wilford?” 

“His energy has grown as well, similar to how it’s been two times before. Is his new addition part of the burden on you?” 

“Is he happy?”

“His energy is positive.”

“Then it’s not.” Dark chewed on his lip for a moment, hesitating and knowing that Host wouldn’t continue without the question. “How is the other?” 

“He’s alive.” Host said in a flat tone.

“Of course he is.” Dark sighed.

“He’s alive and his energy grows with curiosity and grows near as well.” Host’s hands went back to his crystal ball. “But first you need to deal with a new energy that will be joining you all soon.” 

“Again?” Dark groaned. “Any tell on who or at least what they are?” 

“All I can see is that the energy is similar to the new happenings of your life.” Host’s brows scrunched. “It’s more inclined towards the new happenings. It’ll affect them more than you.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“I can not tell, I’m sorry.”

“Any guess on when?”

“Very soon, very very soon. You need to get to the ship. You need to go now. I am trying to look beyond but it’s fighting back.” 

“Don’t hurt yourself.” Dark stood up and placed his hands over Host’s. “Thank you.” 

“I’m sorry.” Host allowed Dark to move his hands away from the crystal ball. 

“Don’t apologize, you always do more than expected.” 

“You should go. Tell me daughter I need rest.” 

“Of course, I’ll see you again Host and hopefully it won’t be as long of a break and I’ll get to stay longer.” 

“I look forward to your visit.”

“Goodbye.” Dark tapped the top of Host’s hands twice before leaving the tent, waving down Annalise. “Host needs rest.”

“Did you make him push himself again?” Annalise asked, shoulders going tense and looking ready to fight. 

“He’s fine, I promise. I’m just relaying the message.” Dark held his hands up and moved away, hearing Annalise going to the tent and scolding her father. Dark went towards the ship, flashing Ms. Applegate a quick smile as he passed and was soon stopped by an, out of breath, Bim. 

“We gotta...we gotta...the ship…”

“Let’s go then.” Dark took off first. Bim groaned and took a few quick breaths before taking off as well. 

“Dark! There you are!” Wilford called from the top of the ship. “We have an emergency!” 

“Who’s hurt?” Dark asked, boarding the ship with Bim. 

“None of us but-”

“It’s Mad,” Google said, coming out from the navigation room. 

“What about him?” Dark asked, seeing that the others were getting the ship ready to sail. 

“He sent us a message.” Google glanced over his shoulder and saw Bing coming out of the room as well. 

“We need to get there as soon as we can, he says it’s getting worse,” Bing said.

“What’s getting worse?” Dark snapped his fingers to get everyone to look at him. 

“Mad said they found a Siren trapped in one of his fishnets,” Google said.

“Okay? And that affects us because?” 

“He says he looks like one of our Sirens and speaking of them, they already left without us.” 

“They left?” Dark scoffed, ignoring the strange pang in the pit of his stomach at hearing the Sirens having abandoned them. 

“We’re going to follow them, right?”

“I don’t-”

“Aren’t you the one that said you wanted Mad on our side?” Bing’s sudden interruption threw everyone off. “Mad needs help and if we ignore him, he’ll never help us again. He’s the one that gave us this communication and this map, we owe him.” 

“Fine. We’ll go.” Dark pointed at Bing. “And if you speak to me like that again, you’ll be sleeping below deck.”

“Yes, Captain.” Bing saluted before going back inside. 

“As soon as the ship is ready, set sail,” Dark called out his order as he went up to the second floor. 

“Yes, Captain!” The crew called back. 

“A new energy similar to the new happenings…” Dark said to himself as he watched the others below. “I hope they’re at least helpful.”


End file.
